Novel Integration Approaches for UHF-Acoustofluidics Biosensing and Manipulation

Acoustic wave (AW) technology is a versatile and powerful tool, beyond the traditional domains of RF filtering and clocking, in biosensing, molecular diagnostics and DNA sequencing applications. Piezoelectric materials can generate and detect acoustic waves that are sensitive to changes in mass, viscosity, conductivity and dielectric properties of the surrounding medium. For, example, ZnO, Al and SiN -based thin-film bulk acoustic resonators (FBAR) have been shown to afford detections of DNA hybridization, protein binding and virus infection, which are of great importance for the diagnosis of CoViD-19 and other infectious diseases. Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) resonators and LiNbO3-based interdigitated transducers achieved high quality factors and atomic scale resolution while operating in the GHz range. These applications have been catalyzed by the urgent need for rapid and accurate detection of diseases in the biomedical field. Additionally, starting from different cell detection approaches such as dielectrophoresis, our group has demonstrated cell trapping, sorting and sensing techniques with great materials and manufacturing integration potential with piezoelectric-MEMS/acoustofluidics platforms. This talk will specifically investigate some of the possible avenues for future integrated UHF-acoustofluidics technologies in the runup to rapid detection and personalized medicine applications. It will be shown how AW technology could not only benefit high-sensitivity/high-specificity molecular detection, but also drive the development of minimally invasive treatment strategies through focused acoustic energy delivery. We hope that this talk will enable the vibrant AW and piezoelectric functional materials community to consider novel applications which are becoming of increasing relevance in contiguous MTT communities and beyond.