Surface acoustic wave (SAW)-driven device for dynamic cell cultures

G. Grecoa, * , M. Agostinia,b , I. tonazzinia , D. sallemi,a , s. baronec , M. Cecchiniaa NEST, Istituto Nanoscienze-CNR and Scuola Normale Superiore, Piazza San Silvestro 12, 56127 Pisa, Italyb

Center for Nanotechnology Innovation @ NEST, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Piazza San Silvestro 12, 56127 Pisa, Italyc Centro Procreazione Assistita-Ospedale Versilia-USL Toscana Nordovest, 55043 Viareggio, Italy

[1] Greco et al., Anal. Chem., 90, 12, 7450-7457[2] greco et al. sens. act. B , 250, 525-532 (2017)[3] Shilton et al. Adv. Func. Mater., 25, 5895-5901 (2015)

References:*email: gina.greco@sns.it

In the last few decades, new types of cell culture have been introduced to provide better cell survival and development, with micro- and nano-environmental physicochemical conditions aimed at mimicking those present in vivo. However, despite the efforts made, the systems available to date are often difficult to re-plicate and use. Here, an easy-to-use surface-acoustic-wave (SAW)-based platform is presented for realizing dynamic cell cultures that is compatible with standard optical microscopes, incubators, and cell-culture dishes.

http://web.nano.cnr.it/neurosens/

the device

fluid dynamics

thermal characterization

electromechanical characterization

RESULTS: cell proliferation assay

SAW mean ampli-tude vs RF power. The inset shows a typical power-reflec-tion spectrum of a fabricated IDT, measured with a vector network analyzer (VNA).

micro particle image velocimetry (μPIV) analysis of ROIs a, b, and c arbitrarily chosen on the plane of focus of the bottom of the culture dish. The SAW amplitude was 750 pm. scale bar is 300 μm.

V (μm/s) SDV (μm/s) SS (mN/m2) SDSS (mN/m2)SAW1 1140 500 120 50SAW2 2700 1200 280 120

Fluid Mean Velocity (V) and Its Standard Deviation (SDV) Mean Shear Stress Applied to Cells (SS) and Its Standard Deviation (SDss)

When a SAW impinges on a liquid, the acoustic energy diffracts into the liquid causing a lon-gitudinal pressure wave to be generated. This wave gives rise to the acoustic streaming, a net fluid motion that can lead to fast mixing also in the case of low Reynolds number regime.

working principle

The activation of SAWs also deter-mines the heating of the sample, through the Joule effect in the IDT and SAW viscous dissipa-tion into both the PDMS and liquid.

saw2 enhanced proliferation

cell morphologypreserved!

higher exchange of gas and metabolites

good SAW homogeneity (@48.8 mhz,

21.5 dBm)

measured performed with a laser doppler vibrometer (LDV)

saw chip

saw platform

interditigital transducer

lithium niobate

compact!compatible with standard cell

incubators, culture dishes and micro-

scope imaging

4 μm/s 8100 μm/slog(v)

(1.7 nm)

(1.1 nm)

u-937monocytes

cells

infrared camera measurements of Heating in the presence of high-amplitude-SAW (SAW2)-induced streaming (RF input power of 26.7 dBm with 500 ms pulses and 20 s periods).

p o l y -dimethyl-siloxane

136 ± 12% (P < 0.05 Student’s t-test)