01 about

Air bubbles inevitably occur when using a pipette during the cell culturing process, but are carefully avoided whenever possible. The reason for this is because the presence of air bubbles within a solution makes it increasingly difficult to properly visualize cells under a microscope and also increases the risk of contamination. This project proposes the idea of bursting air bubbles among the surface of fetal bovine serum (FBS) solution samples via the use of short ultrasonic pulses. The “Ultrasonic Bubble Popper” has been successfully developed to emit ultrasonic pulses that match the resonant frequency (40 kHz1.2 MHz) of most resulting surface air bubbles within a petri dish. The device was designed for use inside of a biological lab fume hood setting. Components and features include: a phased array of ultrasonic transducers, temperature sensor, image processing and scatter light detection for appropriately identifying the presence of bubbles, and a user-centric software interface for operational ease of use. Practically, the Ultrasonic Bubble Popper is incredibly useful for all biological labs that culture cells in FBS media solutions and would prefer that all cell culture containers are bubble-free prior to incubation, or storage.

02 presentations

03 documents

CDR SUMMER

EEL 4914

2020

CDR FALL

EEL 4915

2020

CONFERENCE PAPER

EEL 4915

2020

04 block diagrams

THANK YOU

The engineers on this project wish to thank and acknowledge the assistance and support of Dr. Samuel Richie, Dr. Lei Wei, Dr. David Hagan, all participating review committee members: Dr. Kyu Young Han, Dr. Peter Delfyett, Dr. Suboh Suboh, Dr. Wei Sun; and all faculty and staff within the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the College of Optics and Photonics at the University of Central Florida.