Influence of acoustic streaming on ultrasonic particle manipulation in a 100-well ring-transducer microplate

We characterize and quantify the performance of ultrasonic particle aggregation and positioning in a 100-well microplate. We analyze the result when operating a planar ultrasonic ring transducer at different single actuation frequencies in the range 2.20–2.40 MHz, and compare with the result obtained from different schemes of frequency-modulated actuation. Compared to our previously used wedge transducer design, the ring transducer has a larger contact area facing the microplate, resulting in lower temperature increase for a given actuation voltage. Furthermore, we analyze the dynamics of acoustic streaming occurring simultaneously with the particle trapping in the wells of the microplate, and we define an adaptive ultrasonic actuation scheme for optimizing both efficiency and robustness of the method. The device is designed as a tool for ultrasound-mediated cell aggregation and positioning. This is a method for high-resolution optical characterization of time-dependent cellular processes at the level of single cells. In this paper, we demonstrate how to operate our device in order to optimize the scanning time of 3D confocal microscopy with the aim to perform high-resolution time-lapse imaging of cells or cell–cell interactions in a highly parallel manner. (paper)