Efficient Driving of Acoustic Microfluidic Devices using a Resonant Plate

Microfluidic acoustophoresis has previously demonstrated excellent discrimination in cell separation that exceeds what is possible at macroscale. However, to achieve high throughput for therapeutic applications, it requires scaling to parallel arrays of microchannels. Scale-up has thus far been limited by a corresponding need for comparable scaling of the piezoelectric source. Here we present a new approach to scale-up, introducing a rigid resonant plate between the microchannel array and the transducer. Results of simulation and experiment with suspended cells show that acoustophoresis is realized in a parallel array of channels with a transducer an order of magnitude smaller than what was previously required.