Zebrafish egg manipulation using ultrasound microbeam

60-MHz lithium niobate single crystal single-element ultrasonic transducers with an f-number (f#) of 0.6 were developed for acoustic microbeam applications. The f# of the transducer is the smallest ever reported on the study of single beam acoustic tweezers. With tightly focused ultrasound microbeam, a single Zebrafish egg as large as ~1.6 mm diameter was demonstrated to be manipulated two dimensionally in water. This is for the first time that the utilization of acoustic microbeam for manipulating such large organism is reported. The preliminary result shows the ultrasound microbeam is versatile that can manipulate the particles or organisms not only in micron scale, but also in millimeter scale. Besides, the demonstration also suggests the potential of ultrasound microbeam for organism sorting applications.