Numerical study of bulk acoustofluidic devices driven by thin-film transducers and whole-system resonance modes

In acoustofluidics, acoustic resonance modes for fluid and microparticle handling are traditionally excited by bulk piezoelectric transducers. this work, we demonstrate numerical simulation in three dimensions (3D) that integrated thin-film transducers constituting less than 0.1% of the device work equally well. The simulations done using a well-tested experimentally validated model. Our proof-of-concept example is water-filled straight channel embedded mm-sized glass chip with 1-um thick transducer made (Al,Sc)N. We compute energy, streaming, radiation force, show it comparable to conventional silicon-glass actuated PZT transducer. ability create desired acoustofluidic effects devices rely on physical aspects: in-plane-expansion under orthogonal applied electric field, whole-system device, high Q-factor elastic solid part device. Consequently, surprisingly insensitive properties