Acoustic tweezers using bisymmetric coherent surface acoustic waves for dynamic and reconfigurable manipulation of particle multimers

Hemin Pan; Deqing Mei; Chengyao Xu; Xin Li; Yancheng Wang

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2023.04.021

Acoustic tweezers using bisymmetric coherent surface acoustic waves for dynamic and reconfigurable manipulation of particle multimers

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2023 Aug:643:115-123. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2023.04.021. Epub 2023 Apr 8.

Authors

Hemin Pan¹, Deqing Mei¹, Chengyao Xu², Xin Li², Yancheng Wang³

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Fluid Power and Mechatronic Systems, School of Mechanical Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.
² Key Laboratory of Advanced Manufacturing Technology of Zhejiang Province, School of Mechanical Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Fluid Power and Mechatronic Systems, School of Mechanical Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China. Electronic address: yanchwang@zju.edu.cn.

PMID: 37058887
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2023.04.021

Abstract

Hypothesis: The accurate and dynamic manipulation of multiple micro-sized objects has always been a technical challenge in areas of colloid assembly, tissue engineering, and organ regeneration. The hypothesis of this paper is the precise modulation and parallel manipulation of morphology of individual and multiple colloidal multimers can be achieved by customizing acoustic field.

Experiments: Herein, we present a colloidal multimer manipulation method by using acoustic tweezers with bisymmetric coherent surface acoustic waves (SAWs), which enables contactless morphology modulation of individual colloidal multimers and patterning arrays by regulating the shape of acoustic field to specific desired distributions with high accuracy. Rapid switching of multimer patterning arrays, morphology modulation of individual multimers, and controllable rotation can be achieved by regulating coherent wave vector configurations and phase relations in real time.

Findings: To demonstrate the capabilities of this technology, we have firstly achieved eleven patterns of deterministic morphology switching for single hexamer and precise switching between three array modes. In addition, the assembly of multimers with three kinds of specific widths and controllable rotation of single multimers and arrays were demonstrated from 0 to 22.4 rpm (tetramers). Therefore, this technique enables reversible assembly and dynamic manipulation of particles and/or cells in colloid synthesis applications.

Keywords: Acoustic tweezers; Colloidal multimer manipulation; Controllable rotation; Morphology modulation; Reconfigurable assembly; Surface acoustic wave (SAW).