Ultrasound Noncontact Particle Manipulation of Three-dimensional Dynamic User-specified Patterns of Particles in Air

Abstract

It may look like magic, but it's science: Using external fields for noncontact particle manipulation offers great advantage in many applications, including lab-on-a-chip technology, materials processing, and containerless transport. In particular, ultrasound wave fields can be used as virtual tweezers to move particles along a chosen trajectory, or to form desired patterns. Typical methods in three dimensions allow manipulation of a single particle, or a static formation of a pattern of particles, but this work presents a method to control the $p\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}o\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}s\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}i\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}t\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}i\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}o\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}n$ $a\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}n\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}d$ $t\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}r\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}a\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}j\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}e\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}c\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}t\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}o\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}r\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}y$ of an entire user-specified pattern, or subsets of the pattern, including individual particles.