Selective Manipulation of Microscopic Particles with Precursor Swirling Rayleigh Waves

Antoine Riaud (1, 2) , Michael Baudoin (1) , Olivier Bou Matar (1) , Loic Becerra (3) , Jean-Louis Thomas (2)

1 IEMN - Institut d’Électronique, de Microélectronique et de Nanotechnologie - UMR 8520
2 INSP-E3 - Acoustique pour les nanosciences
3 INSP - Institut des Nanosciences de Paris

Contactless manipulation of microparticles is demonstrated with single-beam acoustical tweezers based on precursor swirling Rayleigh waves. These surface waves degenerate into acoustical vortices when crossing a stack made of a fluid layer and its solid support, hence creating a localized acoustical trap in a fluid cavity. They can be synthesized with a single interdigitated transducer whose spiraling shape encodes the phase of the field like a hologram. For applications, these tweezers have many attractive features: they are selective, flat, easily integrable, and compatible with disposable substrates.

Domaines: Acoustique [physics.class-ph]

Antoine Riaud, Michael Baudoin, Olivier Bou Matar, Loic Becerra, Jean-Louis Thomas. Selective Manipulation of Microscopic Particles with Precursor Swirling Rayleigh Waves. Physical Review Applied, 2017, 7, pp.024007. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevApplied.7.024007⟩. ⟨hal-01519025⟩