Thesis Project Form

Interactions of low intensity ultrasound (LUS) with cells and biological tissues are exploited for different purposes including cell differentiation, tissue regeneration, cell activity modulation etc. It is therefore of interest the possibility to have microfluidic systems with integrated transducers capable to deliver controlled LUS to in vitro biological models.

The aim of the thesis is to design, fabricate, and characterize soft piezoelectric transducers with arbitrary geometries capable to generate LUS in the 0.1-1 MHz range. The transducers will be based on piezoelectric nanoparticles embedded in a soft elastomeric matrix (e.g. PDMS).
The activities will include the fabrication of the transducer, the characterization of its piezoelectric properties, and the characterization of the pressure wave generated both in air and water.