Cylindrical micro touch sensor with a piezoelectric thin film for microbial separation

Isolation and separation of the target microbe or cell from a large heterogeneous population is quite important. We propose a new touch sensor that is used for the separation of the target microbe with a pipette. This sensor is sensitive enough to protect the fragile pipette tip from abrupt collision. Using this sensor, we developed a novel separation system for screening a target microorganisms from the randomly distributed samples in the dish with the local viscosity control of the thermosensitive hydrogel. With this system, the target yeast cell was extracted successfully.