Abstract
The combination of high power laser beams with microfluidic delivery of cells is at the heart of high-throughput, single-cell analysis and disease diagnosis with an optical stretcher. So far, the challenges arising from this combination have been addressed by externally aligning optical fibres with microfluidic glass capillaries, which has a limited potential for integration into lab-on-a-chip environments. Here we demonstrate the successful production and use of a monolithic glass chip for optical stretching of white blood cells, featuring microfluidic channels and optical waveguides directly written into bulk glass by femtosecond laser pulses. The performance of this novel chip is compared to the standard capillary configuration. The robustness, durability and potential for intricate flow patterns provided by this monolithic optical stretcher chip suggest its use for future diagnostic and biotechnological applications.
Highlights
Methods for single cell analysis are gaining increasing importance in unravelling biological complexity due to the well-recognized diversity in cell populations [1]
In this work we present a new monolithic optical stretcher in which optical waveguides are fabricated by femtosecond laser micromachining in a commercial glass microfluidic chip [Figs. 1(d)–1(f)]
HL60 cells have a diameter in the 16–23 μm range, and all the cells passing in the monolithic optical stretcher (MOS) device are efficiently trapped; this means that the optical waveguides are situated at the correct position with respect to the channel bottom floor
Summary
Methods for single cell analysis are gaining increasing importance in unravelling biological complexity due to the well-recognized diversity in cell populations [1]. Towards this end, optical stretching is a powerful technique to monitor the mechanical properties of single suspended cells as inherent functional cell marker by means of the application of optical forces [2]. The measurement of the cell mechanical properties is accomplished by evaluating the cell elongation as a function of the applied optical force [11]
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