EAGER: Monolithic Phononic Crystals and Programmable Surface Acoustic Wave Microfluidics

EAGER：单片声子晶体和可编程表面声波微流体

• 批准号: 1642502
• 负责人: Ahmet Yanik
• 金额: $ 8.5万
• 依托单位: University of California-Santa Cruz
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-07-01 至 2017-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1642502&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: EAGER; Monolithic; Phononic; Crystals; Programmable

The last few decades, a number of major technological breakthroughs are mainly enabled by our ability to control two elementary particles: electrons and photons. Phonon is another important elementary particle that is responsible from heat and sound transfer. However, there are only limited studies focused on exploiting phonons for our needs. Harvesting phonons, specifically surface acoustic waves, could lead to new practical microfluidic devices with novel properties. Acoustic phonons can exert strong radiation forces to bioparticles (viruses, bacteria and cell) and manipulate them with high precision and efficiency. This proposal offers using phononic crystals to achieve this. Incorporation of such phononic crystals with microfluidics provides an unprecedented level of control on surface acoustic waves in microfluidic system. This capability can potentially lead to monolithic, ultra-compact, versatile and programmable microfluidic devices. Fusing of phononics and microfluidics could open door to a new world of lab-on-chip biomedical technologies and impact everyday life in previously unthinkable ways, in a similar fashion to how electrons and photons did so far. The educational component of this program is expected to provide UCSC undergraduate and graduate students with interdisciplinary training in physics, electrical engineering and biological sciences. Outcomes of the research will be integrated in a graduate student curriculum and results will be disseminated to broader audience by presentations to middle school Girls through 'Girls in Engineering Program' and to underrepresented minorities through 'Multicultural Engineering Program' The objective of this research proposal is to explore the feasibility of developing microfluidic devices with new functionalities using phononic crystals on silicon substrates. Phononic crystals offer potentially unlimited ways of tailoring acoustic waves. However, to date, they have not been used in acousto-microfluidic applications, other than few simple applications related to mixing and guiding of microdroplets resting on a solid substrate in open air. Full integration of continuous flow microfluidics and phononic crystals has yet to be demonstrated. This project aims to demonstrate practical, facile utilization of phononic crystals in acoustofluidics by making use of the concepts such as band gap formation and evanescent modes of defect states. In this one-year proposal, two basic design concepts will be explored: (i) phononic crystal reflectors, and (ii) phononic crystal waveguide structures. These two structures offer a complete set of basic building blocks to achieve more complex phononic crystal microfluidics with enhanced capabilities (see motivation section below). This one-year project has four specific goals: (1)To design phononic crystal devices with theoretical modeling and finite element simulations. (2)To fabricate of phononic crystal devices and integrate them with interdigital transducers on a silicon substrate. (3)To characterize surface acoustic wave behavior of the integrated structures. (4)To integrate microfluidics with phononic crystals and interdigital transducers to achieve size based micro-particle separation and micro-particle guiding. The proposed research program involves numerical design of monolithic acoustofluidic systems in which particle manipulation is taken care of by phononic crystals through techniques, such as finite-element method. The devices are fabricated using well-established microfabrication techniques such as photolithography, metal deposition, soft lithography and deep reactive ion etching. In this proposal, microfuidic testing will be limited to fluorescent silica particles for rapid device development purposes.

在过去的几十年里，许多重大的技术突破主要是由于我们能够控制两种基本粒子：电子和光子。声子是另一种重要的基本粒子，负责传热和传热。然而，只有有限的研究集中在利用声子为我们的需要。收集声子，特别是表面声波，可能会导致新的实用微流体设备具有新的特性。声学声子可以对生物粒子（病毒、细菌和细胞）施加强大的辐射力，并对它们进行高精度和高效率的操纵。该提议提出使用声子晶体来实现这一点。这种声子晶体与微流体的结合提供了对微流体系统中的表面声波的前所未有的控制水平。这种能力可以潜在地导致单片、超紧凑、多功能和可编程的微流体装置。声子学和微流体学的融合可能会为芯片实验室生物医学技术的新世界打开大门，并以以前不可想象的方式影响日常生活，就像电子和光子到目前为止所做的那样。该计划的教育部分预计将为UCSC本科生和研究生提供物理，电气工程和生物科学的跨学科培训。研究成果将被纳入研究生课程，并通过“女孩工程计划”向中学女生和“多元文化工程计划”向代表性不足的少数民族介绍，向更广泛的受众传播研究成果。声子晶体提供了潜在的无限的方式来剪裁声波。然而，迄今为止，它们还没有用于声微流体应用，除了与在露天中静止在固体基底上的微滴的混合和引导相关的几个简单应用之外。连续流微流体和声子晶体的完全集成还有待证明。本计画旨在利用缺陷态的能带隙形成与消失模等概念，来说明声子晶体在声流体学上的实用性与简易性。在这个为期一年的计划中，将探讨两个基本的设计概念：（i）声子晶体反射器，和（ii）声子晶体波导结构。这两种结构提供了一套完整的基本构建模块，以实现具有增强功能的更复杂的声子晶体微流体（参见下面的动机部分）。本计画为期一年，主要有四个目标：（1）利用理论模型与有限元素模拟设计声子晶体元件。(2)To制造声子晶体器件并将它们与硅衬底上的叉指换能器集成。(3)To表征集成结构的表面声波行为。(4)To将微流体与声子晶体和叉指换能器集成以实现基于尺寸微粒分离和微粒引导。拟议的研究计划涉及整体式声流控系统的数值设计，其中粒子操纵是通过声子晶体通过技术，如有限元法照顾。这些器件是使用成熟的微加工技术，如光刻，金属沉积，软光刻和深反应离子蚀刻。在本提案中，出于快速器械开发的目的，微荧光测试将仅限于荧光二氧化硅颗粒。