Researchers Create Ultrasonic Hands to Grip and Move Microparticles
Posted on May 17, 2014
Researchers have developed acoustic tweezers or "ultrasonic hands" to grab microparticles, such as cells, under a microscope. The technology, developed by a team of researchers from Universities of Bath, Bristol and Dundee, uses ultrasonic waves to move microscopic cells without damaging them.
The researchers developed an array of 64 ultrasonic loudspeakers to generate the complex patterns of ultrasonic waves needed to create up to three separate particle traps. These traps are small regions to which particles are confined by the sound field. The traps are formed using acoustic waves to create very small vortices or whirlpools of sound which pull in and hold the objects in place. The positions of the whirlpools of sound can be adjusted by controlling the array of the tiny loudspeakers.
Dr. Charles Courtney, from the University of Bath's Department of Mechanical Engineering, says in a statement, "We have shown that sophisticated microparticle manipulation is possible using a relatively simple desktop apparatus that can be used with a standard microscope system. We believe this has the potential to radically improve results in bioscience labs where pinpoint positioning of cells is a useful research tool."
The research paper is published here in Applied Physics Letters.
