Nonlinear trapping stiffness of mid-air single-axis acoustic levitators

Acoustic rainbow trapping

NSF Nano-scale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC), 3112 Etcheverry Hall, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma 74078, USA, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, China, Departamento de Fisica Teorica de la Materia Condensada and Condensed Matter Phy...

Acoustic trapping of active matter.

Confinement of living microorganisms and self-propelled particles by an external trap provides a means of analysing the motion and behaviour of active systems. Developing a tweezer with a trapping radius large compared with the swimmers' size and run length has been an experimental challenge, as standard optical traps are too weak. Here we report the novel use of an acoustic tweezer to confine ...

Unilateral air trapping.

Combined acoustic and optical trapping

Combining several methods for contact free micro-manipulation of small particles such as cells or micro-organisms provides the advantages of each method in a single setup. Optical tweezers, which employ focused laser beams, offer very precise and selective handling of single particles. On the other hand, acoustic trapping with wavelengths of about 1 mm allows the simultaneous trapping of many, ...

Optical Trapping of Gold Nanoparticles in Air.

Most progress on optical nanoparticle control has been in liquids, while optical control in air has proven more challenging. By utilizing an air chamber designed to have a minimum of turbulence and a single laser beam with a minimum of aberration, we trapped individual 200 to 80 nm gold nanoparticles in air and quantified the corresponding trapping strengths. These results pave the way for cons...