Development of high frequency focused transducers for single beam acoustic tweezers

Contactless particle trapping and manipulation have found many potential applications in diverse fields, especially in biological and medical research. Among the various methods, optical tweezers is the most well-known and extensively investigated technique. However, there are some limitations for particle manipulation based on optical tweezers. Due to the conceptual similarity with the optical tweezers and recent advances in high frequency ultrasonic transducer, a single beam acoustic tweezer using high frequency (≥ 20 MHz) focused transducer has recently been considered, and its feasibility was theoretically and experimentally investigated. ❧ This dissertation mainly describes the development of high frequency focused ultrasonic transducers for single beam acoustic tweezers applications. Three different types of transducers were fabricated. First, a 60 MHz miniature focused transducer (<1 mm) was made using press-focusing technique. The single beam acoustic trapping experiment was performed to manipulate 15 µm polystyrene microspheres using this transducer. In vitro ultrasonic biomicroscopy imaging on the rabbit eye was also obtained with this device. Second approach is to build a 200 MHz self-focused ZnO transducer by sputtering ZnO film on a curved surface of the aluminum backing material. An individual 10 µm microsphere was effectively manipulated in two dimensions by this type of transducer. Another ultrahigh frequency focused transducer based on silicon lens design has also been developed, where a 330 MHz silicon lens transducer was fabricated and evaluated. Microparticle trapping experiment was carried out to demonstrate that silicon lens transducer can manipulate a single microsphere as small as 5 µm. The realization of single beam acoustic tweezers using high frequency focused transducers can offer wide range of applications in biomedical and chemical sciences including intercellular kinetics studies and cell stimulation. ❧ Additionally, we propose a simple and efficient approach to prepare xPMN-PT-(1-x)PZT (where x is 0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 0.7 and 0.9) composite films with controllable dielectric constant that offers better performance for high frequency ultrasonic transducer applications. A 200 MHz single element transducer utilizing 0.9PMN-PT-0.1PZT thin film was built. This type of xPMN-PT-(1-x)PZT film transducers may satisfy current needs of very high frequency biomedical applications, such as ultrasonic biomicroscopy or acoustic tweezers.