Self-Focused AIScN Film Ultrasound Transducer for Individual Cell Manipulation

Precise cell positioning is indispensable in the fields of biophysics and cellular biology. Acoustic microbeam produced by a highly focused ultrasound transducer has recently been investigated for a particle or cell manipulation. By virtue of the relatively good piezoelectric property, Sc doped AIN film was introduced for a highly focused ultrasound transducer application. Using a sputtering approach, a self focused AIScN film based device has been designed, fabricated, and characterized at a frequency of' similar to 230 MHz. It had a narrow lateral beam width (similar to 8.2 mu m). The AIScN ultrasound transducer was not only shown to be capable of remote controlling a single 10 mu m polystyrene microsphere in distilled water, but also demonstrated to possess the capability to manipulate without contact individual 10 mu m epidermoid carcinoma cell in two dimensions within a range of hundreds of micrometers in phosphate buffered saline. Most importantly, the cell manipulation was realized in continuous mode and no switch-on and -off operation was needed. These results suggest that self-focused AIScN film ultrasound transducer is a promising candidate for biomedical and molecular biology applications.