Acoustic tweezers provide an effective means for manipulating single cells and particles in a high-throughput, precise, selective and contact-free manner. The adoption of acoustic tweezers in next-generation cellular assays may advance our understanding of biological systems. Here we present a comprehensive set of instructions that guide users through device fabrication, instrumentation setup and data acquisition to study single cells with an experimental throughput that surpasses traditional methods, such as atomic force microscopy and micropipette aspiration, by several orders of magnitude. With acoustic tweezers, users can conduct versatile experiments that require the trapping, patterning, pairing and separation of single cells in a myriad of applications ranging across the biological and biomedical sciences. This procedure is widely generalizable and adaptable for investigations in materials and physical sciences, such as the spinning motion of colloids or the development of acoustic-based quantum simulations. Overall, the device fabrication requires ~12 h, the experimental setup of the acoustic tweezers requires 1–2 h and the cell manipulation experiment requires ~30 min to complete. Our protocol is suitable for use by interdisciplinary researchers in biology, medicine, engineering and physics.

声学镊子提供了一种以高通量、精确、选择性和非接触方式操纵单个细胞和颗粒的有效手段。在下一代细胞检测中采用声学镊子可能会增进我们对生物系统的理解。在这里，我们提供了一套全面的说明，指导用户完成设备制造、仪器设置和数据采集，以研究单细胞，其实验通量超过传统方法（如原子力显微镜和微量移液器抽吸）几个数量级。借助声学镊子，用户可以在生物和生物医学科学的众多应用中进行需要捕获、图案化、配对和分离单细胞的多功能实验。该过程可广泛推广并适用于材料和物理科学的研究，例如胶体的旋转运动或基于声学的量子模拟的开发。总体而言，设备制造需要约 12 小时，声镊子的实验设置需要 1-2 小时，细胞操作实验需要约 30 分钟才能完成。我们的协议适合生物学、医学、工程和物理学的跨学科研究人员使用。