Mobile acoustic streaming based trapping and 3-dimensional transfer of a single nanowire

Abstract

Acoustic manipulations of single nanoscale entities were not realized before this work owing to the acoustic streaming which usually flushes a trapped entity away. Here, we demonstrate a strategy that uses mobile acoustic streaming to effectively trap and align a single nanowire within water film on substrate surface, and stably transfers a trapped nanowire through an arbitrary 3-dimensional path in the water film. The streaming is generated by a vibrating micro-probe with uniform diameter. In our experiments, a trapped nanowire is constantly on the side of the micro-probe tip, perpendicular to the micro-probe vibration, and symmetric about the micro-probe approximately.