Carving of protein crystal by high-speed micro-bubble jet using micro-fluidic platform

This paper reports a novel micro-fluidic platform for carving protein crystal with electrically driven high-speed mono-dispersed micro-bubble jet. This minimally invasive micro-processing method overcomes the difficulties of processing, holding and positioning fragile material such as protein crystal underwater. The combination of using electrically-induced micro-bubble knife and microfluidic channel provide effective carving of protein crystal by ablation crystal and draining of chips by free vortex flow in microchannel. Three-dimensional positioning of crystal was sufficiently achieved by the configuration of effective micro-fluidic channels. The protein crystal can be carved to the desired shape to fit to X-ray analysis effectively. It seemed that it has potential to contribute to more precise protein analysis.