Cell selective manipulation with single beam acoustical tweezers.

Michael Baudoin (1) , Jean-Louis Thomas (2) , Roudy Al Sahely (1) , Jean-Claude Gerbedoen (1) , Zhixiong Gong (1) , Aude Sivery (1) , Olivier Bou Matar (1) , Nikolay Smagin (1) , Alexis Vlandas (1)

1 IEMN - Institut d’Électronique, de Microélectronique et de Nanotechnologie - UMR 8520
2 INSP - Institut des Nanosciences de Paris

Acoustical tweezers open major prospects in microbiology for cells and microorganisms contactless manipulation, organization and mechanical properties testing. Yet, these tremendous perspectives have so far been hindered by the absence of selectivity of existing acoustical tweezers and/or their limited resolution restricting their use to large particle manipulation only. Here, we report precise selective contactless manipulation and positioning of human cells in a standard microscopy environment, without altering their viability. The unprecedented selectivity and miniaturization is achieved by combining holography with active materials and fabrication techniques derived from the semi- conductor industry to synthesize specific wavefields (called focused acoustical vortices) designed to produce stiff localized traps. We anticipate this work to be a starting point toward widespread application of acoustical tweezers in fields as diverse as tissue engineering, cells mechano-transduction analysis, neural network study or mobile microorganisms imaging, for which precise ma- nipulation and/or controlled application of stresses is mandatory.

Domains: Acoustics [physics.class-ph]

Michael Baudoin, Jean-Louis Thomas, Roudy Al Sahely, Jean-Claude Gerbedoen, Zhixiong Gong, et al.. Cell selective manipulation with single beam acoustical tweezers.. 2020. ⟨hal-02433142v1⟩