Routing (electronic design automation)

Computer hardware

Engineering

Microfluidics

Biomedical engineering

Materials science

Electrowetting

Biocompatible material

Fluidics

Planar

Embedded system

Computer graphics (images)

Computer science

Thermodynamics

Physics

Nanotechnology

Diffusion

Dielectric

Digital microfluidics

Optoelectronics

Electrical engineering

Nature Communications

For decades, scientists have pursued the goal of performing automated reactions in a compact fluid processor with minimal human intervention. Most advanced fluidic handling technologies (e.g., microfluidic chips and micro-well plates) lack fluid rewritability, and the associated benefits of multi-path routing and re-programmability, due to surface-adsorption-induced contamination on contacting structures. This limits their processing speed and the complexity of reaction test matrices. We present a contactless droplet transport and processing technique called digital acoustofluidics which dynamically manipulates droplets with volumes from 1 nL to 100 µL along any planar axis via acoustic-streaming-induced hydrodynamic traps, all in a contamination-free (lower than 10 −10 % diffusion into the fluorinated carrier oil layer) and biocompatible (99.2% cell viability) manner. Hence, digital acoustofluidics can execute reactions on overlapping, non-contaminated, fluidic paths and can scale to perform massive interaction matrices within a single device.

Digital acoustofluidics enables contactless and programmable liquid handling