Experimental study of temporal dynamics of cavitation bubbles selectively attached to the solid surfaces of different hydrophobicity under the action of ultrasound

Micro-Acoustic Holograms for Detachable Microfluidic Devices

Acoustic microfluidic devices have advantages for diagnostic applications, therapeutic solutions, and fundamental research due to their contactless operation, simple design, and biocompatibility. However, most acoustofluidic approaches are limited to forming simple and fixed acoustic patterns, or have limited resolution. In this study,a detachable microfluidic device is demonstrated employing miniature acoustic holograms to create reconfigurable, flexible, and high-resolution acoustic fields in microfluidic channels, where the introduction of a solid coupling layer makes these holograms easy to fabricate and integrate. The application of this method to generate flexible acoustic fields, including shapes, characters, and arbitrarily rotated patterns, within microfluidic channels, is demonstrated.

Suppression of the height deviation on metal bumps manufacturing by an ultrasonic vibration control

On-demand droplet printing based on piezoelectric micro-jet device (PMJD) is considered a flexible and high-precision method to generate metal droplets directly for flip-chip bonding in industrial electronics. However, the quality of flip-chip bonding is closely related to the height deviation of the solidified droplets (the metal bumps), which is influenced by the complicated hydrodynamics of impacting and oscillation of the droplet with oxide film. Here, the numerical and experimental investigations are first conducted to study the effect of the liquid bridge and deposition parameters on the height deviation of the solidified droplets. The rapid oxidation of the liquid bridge and under-oscillation during the deposition process are the main reasons for height deviation. In addition, the undamped oscillation with high-speed impact and instantaneous solidification also deteriorates the height deviation. To this end, an oscillation control strategy based on ultrasonic-assisted metal droplet deposition (UAMDD) is proposed and verified to be a reliable regulation strategy to suppress the height deviation of the printed bumps. The effective regulating range of height deviation is studied experimentally by changing the ultrasonic vibration amplitude. Finally, a 10 × 10 array composed of 100 solidified metal droplets is printed with the UAMDD, which has the height deviation of 554 ± 6 μm. And the dimensionless height deviation (Δh/h) of solidified bumps is stayed below 2.1 %.

Mechanisms underlying the influence of skin properties on a single cavitation bubble in low-frequency sonophoresis

As a safe and effective method for systemic transdermal drug delivery (TDD), sonophoresis has drawn much attention from researchers. Despite numerous studies confirming cavitation as the main reason for sonophoresis, the effect skin has on cavitation bubble dynamics remains elusive due to the difficulty of experimental challenges. For a start, we reveal how single cavitation bubble (SCB) dynamics are affected by skin properties, including elasticity, hydrophilicity and texture. We use polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) to simulate human skin and record the temporary evolution of SCBs with synchronous ultrafast photography. The influences of skin properties on SCBs are concluded: 1) SCBs collapse later near walls with better elasticities and generate microjets with higher speed; 2) SCBs collapse later near hydrophilic walls with slower microjets; and 3) the existence of a texture structure on walls also delays the time of bubble collapse near them and slows the velocities of microjets (v) during collapses.