Research doesn’t always go as planned, and sometimes results can appear to be abnormal. Some professors, like Xiaoyun Ding, see this as an opportunity to achieve the next big discovery. 

Ding, an associate professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering, leads the Biomedical Microfluidics Laboratory (BMMLab) at 91����Ƶ Boulder. His team stumbled across an interesting anomaly during a cell sensing project that used different forms of acoustic waves to measure cell mechanics.

Associate Professor Xiaoyun Ding (right) and his lab group during summer 2024.

When using a surface acoustic wave to rearrange DNA particles, Yu Gao, a research associate in Ding’s group, managed to assemble the particles in a diamond shape. This type of shape assembly has never been observed before in a microfluidic environment using acoustic waves. 

But what did it mean?

“Normally, acoustic wave patterns resemble a kind of circular-shaped aggregation of particles,” said Ding, also a faculty member in biomedical engineering. “After seeing this pattern, though, we had a feeling it could be a completely new wave mode that is contributing to this phenomenon.

“So we reached out to our collaborators Thomas Voglhuber-Brunnmaier and Bernhard Jakoby in Austria. They helped us model our experiment. Sure enough, their results matched our initial observation.”

According to Ding, the newly discovered wave mode has a few unique traits compared to the traditional acoustic wave modes used in acoustic tweezer research. First, it contains a horizontal polarization, allowing the wave to move sideways along the interface rather than oscillating across a vertical plane. 

The wave mode can also apply electric force to a particle or cell, instead of standard acoustic force. He says being able to configure the various wave modes and switch between them on demand can lead to even more major breakthroughs when studying cell mechanics or cell manipulation.

“I always tell my students: in both research and life, you will see something you don’t expect,” Ding said. “It’s not called failure. The result that you do not expect could be an opportunity.”

“Cells with different properties, like cancer cells, respond differently to electric force,” Ding said. “Manipulating the electric field will allow us to separate these cells with more sensitivity and accuracy. We’ll be able to detect more of their properties and study their mechanics more efficiently.

“Before this discovery, there was no intrinsic control over generating acoustic force or electric force. Now, we can selectively generate these different wave modes and apply different forces simply by changing the frequency.”

The research conducted by Ding and his colleagues, titled “,” has been published by Physical Review Letters. Professor Massimo Ruzzene is also a co-author of the paper.

Their work serves as another example of interdisciplinary collaboration, a common theme in the College of Engineering and Applied Science.

“Our group is actively working with people in the medical and biology fields. They tell us their problems, and we try to develop technology that can solve those problems,” said Ding. “We take on their issues, and we try to make their lives easier.”

But Ding says the BMMLab atmosphere isn’t only focusing on biomedical problem-solving. There are other lessons to be learned that go far beyond the laboratory. 

“I always tell my students: in both research and life, you will see something you don’t expect,” Ding said. “It’s not called failure. The result that you do not expect could be an opportunity.”

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Watch Jacob Segil, CEO of Afference and research professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering, showcase a new piece of haptic technology in an episode of Freethink's Hard Reset docuseries that will "redraw the borders of reality."

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