Ultra-high-frequency (UHF) surface-acoustic-wave (SAW) microfluidics and biosensors

Abstract Surface acoustic waves (SAWs) have the potential to become the basis for a wide gamut of lab-on-a-chips (LoCs). These mechanical waves are among the most promising physics that can be exploited for fulfilling all the requirements of commercially appealing devices that aim to replace–or help–laboratory facilities. These requirements are low processing cost of the devices, scalable production, controllable physics, large flexibility of tasks to perform, easy device miniaturization. To date, SAWs are among the small set of technologies able to both manipulate and analyze biological liquids with high performance. Therefore, they address the main needs of microfluidics and biosensing. To this purpose, the use of high-frequency SAWs is key. In the ultra-high-frequency regime (UHF, 300 MHz—3 GHz) SAWs exhibit large sensitivities to molecule adsorption and unparalleled fluid manipulation capabilities, together with overall device miniaturization. The UHF-SAW technology is expected to be the realm for the development of complex, reliable, fully automated, high-performance LoCs. In this review, we present the most recent works on UHF-SAWs for microfluidics and biosensing, with a particular focus on the LoC application. We derive the relevant scale laws, useful formulas, fabrication guidelines, current limitations of the technology, and future developments.