Experimental study on levitation control of particles and liquid droplets by vortex acoustic field enhanced by subwavelength pipe

Abstract

The nonlinear propagation of acoustic waves in a medium generates acoustic radiation force. Using acoustic radiation force, particles and liquid droplets in gases can be levitated and manipulated. Acoustic levitation techniques can manipulate larger objects in the medium without contact, and therefore have been widely used in chemical analysis, droplet dynamics, and bioreactors. The acoustic levitation researches mainly focus on manipulating particles and droplets in an open environment, which provides flexibility in its use. However, this approach has limitations in terms of its efficiency in utilizing acoustic field energy. In this work we propose a concept of subwavelength pipe-enhanced acoustic tweezers, in which the acoustic field is used to manipulate expanded polystyrene particles (EPS) and droplets inside an acoustic pipe with an inner diameter smaller than the wavelength. In this work, we use four small transducers to excite a single low-order mode of a circular waveguide and its simplex state, and we also use the vortex sound field generated inside the waveguide to levitate and manipulate expanded polystyrene particle and droplet in the air. Compared with previous work in an open environment, we significantly enhance the acoustic radiation force by means of the acoustic resonance effect of the subwavelength duct, with both radial and axial suspension force magnitude increasing considerably. Similar concepts of subwavelength optical waveguides and resonant cavities and their effectiveness were already well known and widely used in the field of optics. In this work we first explain theoretically the basis for the design of subwavelength pipe-enhanced acoustic tweezer dimensions. Then, we point out in simulation that the pipe-enhanced acoustic tweezers, compared with the open environment acoustic tweezers, have strong sound field gradient distribution and acoustic radiation force distribution in the pipe. This conclusion is demonstrated experimentally. Finally, the manipulation of droplet and particle levitation and rotation in subwavelength-pipe-enhanced acoustic tweezers is systematically carried out. In this work we introduce the concept of subwavelength acoustic pipe for acoustic manipulation, which is expected to deepen the physical understanding of the interaction between acoustic fields and matter, and to develop new miniaturized acoustic manipulation devices for levitating particles and droplets.