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A compact driver based on current feedback amplifiers is designed to drive interdigital transducers (IDTs) that generate standing surface acoustic waves for cell sorting. Compared with commercial RF amplifiers, this driver can be used to drive a wider range of loads without impedance matching. Furthermore, the driver works in a switch mode triggered by target cells, which significantly reduces power consumption in the system. A Butterworth-Van Dyke equivalent circuit was fabricated to study the electrical characteristics of the IDTs, and the driver was designed and optimized by circuit simulations. A cell sorter was constructed and tested experimentally to demonstrate that the driver meets sorting requirements. The driver allows the cell sorter to extract rare cells while otherwise consuming low power.

Characterizing the photoactivation performance of highlighter fluorescence proteins (FPs) is crucial for screening better highlighter FPs and optimizing the photoactivation efficiency of a certain highlighter FP. Currently, photoactivation contrast and half-time values of photoactivation and photobleaching processes are used for such purpose. However, the relations among these parameters are not clear, and little guidance for practical experiments could be obtained from the half-time values. Here, we show that light dose dependent fluorescence curve, which is calculated from activation-intensity-dependent photoactivation and photobleaching rates, is capable of quantifying the photoactivation performance straightforwardly. Moreover, the photoactivation contrast is easily obtained from the curve.