An acoustofluidic trap and transfer approach for organizing a high density single cell array

Abstract

We demonstrate a hybrid microfluidic system that combines fluidic trapping and acoustic switching to organize an array of single cells at high density. The fluidic trapping step is achieved by balancing the hydrodynamic resistances of three parallel channel segments forming a microfluidic trifurcation, the purpose of which was to capture single cells in a high-density array. Next, the cells were transferred into adjacent larger compartments by generating an array of streaming micro-vortices to move the cells to the desired streamlines in a massively parallel format. This approach can compartmentalize single cells with efficiencies of ≈67% in compartments that have diameters on the order of ∼100 um, which is an appropriate size for single cell proliferation studies and other single cell biochemical measurements.