• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.42 no.5
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• pp.452-459
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• 2023

Acoustic tweezers represent an exceptionally versatile and adaptable collection of instruments that harness the intrinsic power of sound waves to manipulate a wide spectrum of bioparticles, ranging from minuscule extracellular vesicles at the nanoscale to more substantial multicellular organisms measuring in millimeters. This field of research has witnessed remarkable progress over the course of the past few decades, primarily in the domain of Single Beam Acoustic Tweezers (SBAT) which utilizes a single element transducer for its operation. Initially conceived as a method for particle trapping, SBAT has since evolved into an advanced platform capable of achieving precise translation of cells and organisms. Recent groundbreaking advancements have significantly enhanced the capabilities of SBAT, unlocking new functionalities such as particle/cell separation and controlled deformation of single cells. These advancements have propelled SBAT to the forefront of bioparticle/cell manipulation, gathering attention within the scientific community. This review explores the core principles of SBAT and how sound waves affect bioparticles/cells. We aim to build a strong conceptual foundation for understanding advancements in this field by detailing its principles and methodologies.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.39 no.5
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• pp.435-440
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• 2020

Single-beam acoustic tweezers that are capable of manipulating micron-size particles in a non-contact manner have been used in many biological and biomedical applications. Current single-beam acoustic tweezer systems developed for in vitro experiments consist of a function generator and a power amplifier, thus the system is bulky and expensive. This configuration would not be suitable for in vivo and clinical applications. Thus, in this paper, we present a portable single-beam acoustic tweezer system and its performances of trapping and manipulating micron-size objects. The developed system consists of an Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) chip and two pulsers, and parameters such as center frequency and pulse duration were controlled by a Personal Computer (PC) via a USB (Universal Serial Bus) interface in real-time. It was shown that the system was capable of generating the transmitting pulse up to 20 MHz, and producing sufficient intensity to trap microparticles and cells. The performance of the system was evaluated by trapping and manipulating 40 ㎛ and 90 ㎛ in diameter polystyrene particles.