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Updated: Jul 23, 2025

High-Speed Magnetic Tweezers for Nanomechanical Measurements on Force-Sensitive Elements

High-Speed Magnetic Tweezers for Nanomechanical Measurements on Force-Sensitive Elements

Published on: May 12, 2023

Acoustic tweezers for high-throughput single-cell analysis.

Shujie Yang¹, Joseph Rufo¹, Ruoyu Zhong¹

¹Thomas Lord Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.

Nature Protocols

|July 19, 2023

Summary

Acoustic tweezers enable high-throughput, precise, and contact-free manipulation of single cells. This protocol details fabrication and setup for advanced cellular assays, surpassing traditional methods in speed and versatility.

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Last Updated: Jul 23, 2025

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Area of Science:

Biophysics
Cell Biology
Microfluidics

Background:

Acoustic tweezers offer precise, contact-free manipulation of cells and particles.
Advancing cellular assays requires high-throughput and selective single-cell analysis methods.
Traditional methods like AFM and micropipette aspiration have limitations in throughput and scale.

Purpose of the Study:

To provide a comprehensive protocol for fabricating and utilizing acoustic tweezers for single-cell studies.
To enable high-throughput, precise, and versatile manipulation of single cells.
To facilitate applications in biological, biomedical, materials, and physical sciences.

Main Methods:

Device fabrication of acoustic tweezers.
Instrumentation setup and calibration.
Data acquisition for single-cell manipulation experiments (trapping, patterning, pairing, separation).

Main Results:

Demonstration of acoustic tweezers for single-cell manipulation with throughput orders of magnitude higher than traditional methods.
Protocol allows for versatile experiments including trapping, patterning, pairing, and separation of single cells.
Device fabrication requires ~12 hours, setup 1-2 hours, and experiments ~30 minutes.

Conclusions:

Acoustic tweezers provide a powerful, generalizable, and adaptable tool for single-cell analysis across multiple scientific disciplines.
The presented protocol significantly enhances experimental throughput for cellular assays.
This method is suitable for interdisciplinary researchers in biology, medicine, engineering, and physics.