Acoustophoretic contactless transport and handling

of matter in air
Daniele Foresti, Majid Nabavi, Mirko Klingauf, Aldo Ferrari, and Dimos Poulikakos1
Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, Laboratory of Thermodynamics in Emerging Technologies, Eidgenssische Technische Hochschule Zrich,
CH-8092 Zurich, Switzerland

Levitation and controlled motion of matter in air have a wealth of

potential applications ranging from materials processing to biochemistry and pharmaceuticals. We present a unique acoustophoretic concept for the contactless transport and handling of matter
in air. Spatiotemporal modulation of the levitation acoustic eld
allows continuous planar transport and processing of multiple
objects, from near-spherical (volume of 0.110 L) to wire-like,
without being limited by the acoustic wavelength. The independence of the handling principle from special material properties
(magnetic, optical, or electrical) is illustrated with a wide palette of
application experiments, such as contactless droplet coalescence and
mixing, solidliquid encapsulation, absorption, dissolution, and
DNA transfection. More than a century after the pioneering work
of Lord Rayleigh on acoustic radiation pressure, a path-breaking
concept is proposed to harvest the signicant benets of acoustic
levitation in air.
acoustics

| uid | ultrasounds | manipulation | microuidics

ontactless transport and handling of matter are of fundamental importance to the study of many physical phenomena
(1, 2) and biochemical processes (3). Typical state-of-the-art
methods of contactless handling of matter are based on electromagnetic (46) principles and have interesting capabilities but also
clear limitations in terms of particle size (micrometer range) and/
or inherent requirements of special material properties.
Acoustic levitation (711) is both contact-free and materialindependent, also without requiring laborious sample preparation.
Although signicant progress has been made in the handling
of microsized particles suspended in a liquid (12, 13), where
buoyancy forces are almost entirely responsible for the levitation,
various drawbacks in the state of the art of acoustic levitation have
prohibited the realization of controlled and reliable transport of
matter in air, thereby limiting the remarkable potential and utility
of acoustic levitation (1416). Its full exploitation requires fundamental advances leading to material transport with high controllability and movement resolution, long transport length, versatility,
and multidimensionality.
Here, we present a unique acoustophoretic concept, enabling
the continuous planar transport and processing of multiple acoustically levitated droplets and particles in air. This is a signicant
advance in the area of contactless handling in air, making it a viable
complementary methodology to existing advanced approaches in
a liquid environment (17, 18), one that has its own unique features,
expanding the horizon of possible applications. The concept is
based on the ability to modulate the acoustic node regions in the
acoustic eld spatially and temporally, enabling the reversible
transition from material trapping to transport. Additionally,
the levitation and handling of extremely elongated objects with
a characteristic length much longer than the acoustic wavelength
is demonstrated through their transport and rotation.

levitation potential [the sum of the acoustic potential (20) and

the gravitational potential; SI Text, section 1]. This varies nonmonotonically between the emitting surface and reector. If it is
strong enough to overcome the gravitational force, small amounts
of matter can be levitated and trapped in its minima (nodes). An
acoustic potential node can correspond to an acoustic pressure
node or antinode, depending on the density and compressibility
of the levitated sample (s and s) and of the surrounding medium [0 and 0 (21)]. To this end, note that s > 0 and s < 0
in the overwhelming majority of envisioned applications in air
(SI Text, section 1).
The acoustic levitation and handling concept is realized with
the help of a discretized planar resonator platform and a single
at reector placed at a uniform distance H. Each discrete resonator element is a specially designed and optimized Langevin
piezoelectric transducer (LPT) excited by a single sinusoidal
signal voltage of ultrasound frequency f (Fig. 1 and Methods). A
newly developed excitation mechanism allows controllable and
smooth propulsion of the levitation potential nodes from one LPT
or a group of LPTs to the next. In this mechanism, the amplitudes
of the sinusoidal inputs A1(t) and A2(t) of the two adjacent LPTs
are varied over the travel period T (time needed for the object to
travel the distance d between the centers of two adjacent LPTs)
in a parabolic manner, as shown in Fig. 1. As a result, a nearly
constant acoustic force magnitude during movement is obtained
due to the proportionality of the acoustic force to the square of
the driving voltage amplitude (Methods). Movie S1 demonstrates
the capability of the present mechanism to perform a multistep
planar process in air acoustophoretically, where two water droplets are introduced, transported from opposite directions, mixed,
transported in the orthogonal direction to be mixed with a third
droplet, and nally collected. We are not aware of any other method
or technology able to perform such multidroplet transport and
handling in a gaseous environment.
The physical principle behind the demonstrated controlled
acoustophoretic transport of matter lies in the spatiotemporal
modulation of the levitation acoustic eld, shown in Fig. 2A and
Movie S2. The transport and mixing of two droplets in a device
consisting of a 1D array of ve LPTs are numerically analyzed
using a validated 3D nite element model (Methods). The model
calculates the levitation potential inside the system as a function
of the vibrational velocity of the emitting surface V0. Fig. 2B
shows the experimental results of the horizontal position of the
two approaching droplets with four traveling velocities (0.6, 1.1,
2.2, and 4.9 mm/s), along with the numerical predictions. Note
that air has a very low damping effect and oscillation of the
samples is present. However, the droplets are stably kept at the

Author contributions: D.F. and D.P. designed research; D.F. performed research; D.F.,
M.K., and A.F. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; D.F., M.N., and D.P. analyzed
data; and D.F., M.N., and D.P. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conict of interest.

Results and Discussion

In acoustic levitation, a standing wave is established between an
emitting surface and a reector (9, 11, 19). The radiation pressure, a nonlinear property of the acoustic eld, engenders the
www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1301860110

This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.

1

To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: dpoulikakos@ethz.ch.

This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.

1073/pnas.1301860110/-/DCSupplemental.

PNAS | July 30, 2013 | vol. 110 | no. 31 | 1254912554

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SCIENCES

Edited by William R. Schowalter, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, and approved June 8, 2013 (received for review January 30, 2013)

the axis connecting two spheres is = 90 (our conguration), is

calculated as (23):
Fr = -30 R3s1 R3s2 v2rms =r 4 ;

Fig. 1. Schematic of the contactless multidrop manipulator and its excitation mechanism. In the illustrative example, droplets are introduced into the
system at three locations (inlets 1, 2, and 3) in a ve-one-two LPT levitator.
Their numbers correspond to the number of LPTs in a certain row. All rows
are on the same plane, parallel to the reector plane. The droplets move and
mix, and the nal sample is delivered to the outlet. The introduction of
droplets into the system can be achieved either manually with a micropipette or with an automatized syringe pump and a glass capillary (Methods).
The reector height H is adjusted with a linear micrometer stage.

middle of a node for a wide range of transport velocities. Fabrication tolerances are challenging for acoustic resonances (Methods),
but future purely technical improvements in platform fabrication
will certainly help reduce such uctuations, which, although possibly presenting a problem to individual sample analysis (22), are
not expected to affect sample advancing and processing seriously.
Before node merging, the velocity of the droplets equals that
of the nodes. After node merging, the droplets approach one
another with a primary acceleration, xp in the range of 0.11 m/s2
(Fig. 2D), due to the primary scattering eld described by the
acoustic potential. These acceleration values are in agreement
with the model, with the horizontal force being one order of
magnitude lower than the vertical force (SI Text, section 3, and
Figs. S1S3). When two droplets come into close proximity (Fig.
2C), the collision velocity increases sharply, with an additional
acceleration xs of the order of 110 m/s2, which cannot be solely
explained with the primary acoustic eld. Understanding of the
underlying physics is critical to realize acoustophoretic merging
of droplets.
A secondary acoustic eld originating from the scattering of
the primary waves on the two levitated objects signicantly contributes to the collision dynamics (the total acceleration is calculated as x = xp + xs ). The theoretical derivation of such a secondary
force for the simple case of two closely placed spheres in an
oscillating ow dates back to more than a century ago (23). The
present work provides a unique platform to observe and investigate this physical phenomenon. To this end, the present results
constitute experimental quantitative conrmation of such secondary
acoustic force (SI Text, section 4). Assuming that the density of the
spheres s is much larger than that of 0 (as in the case of a liquid
droplet levitated in air), the attraction force on either sphere Fr,
when the angle between the direction of wave propagation and
12550 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1301860110

[1]

where r is the center-to-center distance of spheres; Rs1 and Rs2

are the radii of the two spheres; and vrms is the rms acoustic
velocity of the surrounding uid, which cannot be measured directly here. SI Text, section 4 explains the numerical model used
to estimate vrms at the levitation nodes, where the mixing takes
place (Fig. S4). Fig. 2D shows the analytical and experimental
values of x for two water droplets of Rs = 0.84 mm, which agree
very well. The agreement is also excellent for droplets of different densities (s = 1 g/cm3 for water and s = 0.76 g/cm3 for
tetradecane) and radii, spanning over a wide range of acceleration
(x = 0.420 m/s2; SI Text, section 4, Fig. S5 AD, and Table S1).
The presented features of local control in space, time, and
magnitude of the acoustic forces and the wide range of possibilities of matter that can be simultaneously handled provide a
rich palette of combinations of liquidliquid, liquidsolid, and
solidsolid transport and interaction.
One distinctive advancement of the present acoustophoretic
method is that it features an almost constant acoustic potential
magnitude during the node transition between two transducers,
which is an important requirement for stable levitation of liquids
(24). In fact, not only does the acoustic force have to be strong
enough to overcome the gravitational force, but it has to be below
the threshold of atomization of the droplet in the acoustic eld.
Indeed, when the acoustic force is stronger than the interfacial
force, the droplet atomizes explosively. The ratio of acoustic
forces to surface forces for a levitated droplet scales with Rs and
is described by the acoustic Bond number (25), Ba = 2v2rms0Rs/,
where is the surface tension of the liquid. The maximum Rs that
can be levitated depends on the critical acoustic Bond number
Ba,cr, which was determined experimentally to be between 2.5
and 3.6 (25). The denition of the Ba,cr implies that when the
vrms increases, the Rs has to decrease strongly. For a driving
frequency of 24 kHz, the theoretical upper size limit for water
and hydrocarbons is around 2.7 mm and 1.6 mm in radius,
respectively (24). Approaching the upper limit of the static levitated droplet, our method allows transport and mixing of two
droplets with a large size ratio.
Fig. 3 AC shows the different behaviors observed during mixing
of two water droplets and two tetradecane droplets. For head-on
merging of droplets, the different regimes of coalescence, bouncing, and separation depend on the Weber number, We = 2Rsu2s/,
where u is the relative impact velocity (26). The two water
droplets coalesce at We = 0.42 (Fig. 3A and Movie S3). Shown in
Fig. 3B are two droplets for which, before merging, the low value
of Ba (1.85 0.47) prevents atomization. However, after merging, due to the larger size of the resulting combined droplet, Ba
increases above the critical point (2.33 0.59), yielding explosive atomization (Movie S4). In Movie S5, explosive atomization
occurs at the very beginning of the merging process (Ba = 2.03
0.72 and Ba = 1.93 0.68). The slow motion of this movie captures visually the effect of the secondary acoustic force discussed
earlier, causing signicant deformation of the droplet just before
merging. Fig. 3C shows that two tetradecane droplets rst bounce
off (We = 0.875), the acoustic force then brings them back together (double bouncing), and they coalesce at the second encounter due to the lower impact velocity (We = 0.25; Movie S6).
The above-mentioned material independence of acoustic levitation allows an unprecedented exibility in the handling and
interactions of solid and liquid entities. Fig. 3 D and E shows
representative solidliquid interaction scenarios. When a solid
polystyrene particle (Rs = 0.5 mm, s = 1 g/cm3) and a liquid
(water) with a high surface tension collide, they do not merge
Foresti et al.

(Movie S7). On the other hand, particle encapsulation is observed if a low surface tension liquid, such as tetradecane, is used
(Fig. 3D and Movie S8). The delicate nature of the acoustophoretic forces is advantageous when dealing with fragile materials, such as crystals and porous media. In this respect, two typical
congurations of porous particle contactless transport and interaction with a liquid drop are considered. First, if the particle is
large enough, it acts as a sponge, absorbing the liquid (Movie S9).
With an evaporation rate of 0.0036 mm2/s for water (27), the
droplet volume reduction due to evaporation (1.1% over 10 s)
does not play a signicant role. Alternatively, small porous particles (e.g., instant coffee granule) dissolve in the water droplet
(Fig. 3E and Movie S10). If the droplet solution is kept in the
device and the water is allowed to evaporate completely, a bowlshaped particle is formed. The behavior of stationary evaporating
droplets containing diluted particles has only recently been studied
(28), and the ndings are qualitatively comparable to those shown
in Fig. 3E.
The inherent substrate-independent and contamination-free
characteristics of the presented concept can be benecial to major
areas of biomedical and biochemical processes. Therefore, its biocompatibility was tested by performing contactless DNA transfection in a temperature- and humidity-controlled environment
(Methods). Fig. 3F shows the schematic of the contactless DNA
transfection and the transfected cells with blurred edges. Demonstrating similar efciency and viability as the standard process,
our contactless transport method is shown to be biocompatible
and suitable for DNA transfection. The occurrence of a photochemical switch in a contactless manner is shown in Fig. 3G,
where a uorescein solution with pH 3 and a physiological solution
Foresti et al.

with pH 12 are mixed. The resulting solution becomes neutral,

which maximizes the uorescent emission.
The spatial and temporal modulation of the acoustic nodes of
the present method allows the levitation and transport functions
of such nodes to be manifested in collaborative manner, wherein
several nodes act as a group and can even merge to form a single
elongated node and carry out a task. This extends the capability
of the present concept beyond the handling of spherical or nearspherical particle and droplet transport and to the controlled
motion of very elongated, wire-like objects. As a result, an extremely elongated object with a characteristic length L much
larger than can be levitated, propelled, transported, and rotated in a controllable manner, going beyond the widely accepted
limit (9, 11, 14, 15, 27) of /2 for the maximum size of an acoustically levitated sample (Fig. 4 and Movie S11). It is worth noting
that, to the best of our knowledge, no previously reported acoustic
levitation devices, including near-eld acoustic levitators (29),
have even been shown to levitate elongated objects of the kind
shown in Fig. 4.
Conclusions
The presented concept paves the way for new classes of processes,
ranging from substrate-free biological and chemical reactions to
novel containerless materials processing methods, by acoustophoretically transporting and mixing droplets and particles.
Matter can now be manipulated at atmospheric conditions by
counteracting the effect of the gravitational force, without requiring a microgravity environment to remove its presence, and
the contactless material handling can be extended to hazardous,
chemical, or radioactive samples. Because the occurrence of a
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Fig. 2. Controlled approach of two droplets in air. (A) Levitation potential inside a ve-LPT device by varying the driving voltage of the LPTs (the levitation
nodes are shown in blue). The small ellipses illustrate the experimental droplet positions. For clarity, only the emitting surfaces of the LPTs are shown. (B)
Experimental results for the horizontal position of two acoustophoretically transported and eventually coalesced water droplets 0.84 mm in diameter for four
traveling velocities, along with the numerical predictions (Figs. S6S8). The oscillations of the droplets during translation are due to the very low damping effect
_ of one of the two approaching water droplets. (D) Analytical and experimental values of total
of the surrounding uid (air). (C) Experimental movement velocity (x)
acceleration (
x ) of the droplets near collision, with respect to the center-to-center droplet distance r (V0 = 2.6 m/s, H/ = 0.496). The dotted line marks the primary
acceleration xp due to the acoustic potential eld. The experimental uncertainty in the estimation of vrms is reected in the error bars of the analytical data.

Fig. 3. Series of representative experiments with droplets or particles using the present acoustophoretic concept. (A) Stable water droplet coalescence (We =
0.42). (B) Explosive atomization after water droplet coalescence. (C) Tetradecane droplets bouncing (We = 0.875) and subsequently coalescing (We = 0.25). (D)
Polystyrene particle collision with tetradecane droplet (We = 0.66). (E) Collision of a porous particle (instant coffee) and a water droplet (We = 0.24). The
colored image at the bottom shows an instant coffee particle before and after the mixing/evaporation process. (F) Schematic of the contactless DNA
transfection process and micrographs of the transfected cells with blurred edges. The transfection agent (TA) was premixed with the DNA solution. (G) Mixing
experiment of uorescein droplet (Left), with a logarithmic acid dissociation constant of pKa = 6.4 and pH 3, and of a droplet of physiological solution with pH
12 (Right). (Scale bars: BE, 1 mm.)

phase change in the samples is not expected to affect their handling

by the acoustophoretic force, related exothermal and endothermal
reactions do not limit the eld of applications of the presented
concept. Magnetic, electrostatic, diamagnetic, and optical forces
can be coupled with the acoustophoretic handling to enhance
even further the stability and the degrees of freedom of the
manipulation.
Methods
Experimental Setup. An LPT is composed of a back brass mass, a front aluminum mass, and a set of piezoelectric elements between the two, clamped
by a bolt (SI Text, section 6, and Fig. S9).
In the optimized design, the emitting surface of LPTs had dimensions of
15 mm 15 mm. The working frequency was f = 24.3 kHz, corresponding to
a wavelength in air of = 14.2 mm. The amplitude of the excitation voltage
was adjusted using an in-house-designed microcontroller-based potentiometer and a LabVIEW program (National Instruments), and it was amplied
to the desired value with an amplier (DPA-4000T; ECLER), as shown in Fig. 1.
The amplitude resolution of the driving signal Ai(t) determines the movement resolution of the object. We used an eight-bit digital signal (256 levels)

12552 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1301860110

for controlling the amplitude, and with d = 16 mm, the theoretical movement step size is calculated to be 16 103/256 62 m. Due to the nonlinearity of the LPTs and the node translation process, the actual positioning
resolution is lower than this value; the minimum step size at the gap between the two LPTs for the case shown in Fig. 2B was found to be around
400 m. The V0 was measured using a laser vibrometer Polytec CLV-2534.
Small holes with a diameter of 1.2 mm in the Plexiglas reector allowed
droplet injection.
The Numerical Model. The Simulia Abaqus (6.9) package was used to calculate
the levitation potential for different vibration amplitudes of the LPTs, and the
sample position was estimated by determining the levitation potential
minima. A 3D nite element model was implemented to solve the linear
acoustic equations in the frequency domain (SI Text, section 2). The linear
acoustic pressure and particle velocity are sufcient to determine the radiation force (nonlinear) based on the levitation potential approach (SI Text,
section 1). Due to symmetry, only half of the domain was modeled. The
radiating plate and the reector were implemented as rigid shells, accounting for acoustic-structural coupling. On the radiating plate, the displacement boundary condition was applied. Innite elements were used at the
outer boundary of the acoustic medium. An additional acoustic medium

Foresti et al.

Fig. 4. Contactless transport of an elongated object (a toothpick with L= 8 cm 6, H ). Controlled rotation: top view (A) and side view (B). (C) Controlled
translation: top view. In principle, there is no limit to the length of the object that can be handled.

Droplet Input Method. In the feasibility studies carried out in this paper,
droplet input into the acoustic manipulator was easily achieved using a Teon
micropipette with an outer radius Rc = 150 m (Movie S1). The acoustic force
acts on the droplet at the outlet of the micropipette and scales with its
volume Rs3, as the gravitational force (SI Text, section 1). When the sum of
the two forces (gravitational and acoustic) overcomes the capillary force, the
droplet is detached. The capillary force acting on a droplet at the outlet of
a pipette of radius Rc is Fc = 2Rc . If gravity is the only force acting on a
water droplet, by simply equating the surface tension force to the gravitational force at the point of detachment, the radius of the detached droplet is
determined to be Rs = 1.18 mm, corresponding to a volume of 6.9 L. Because Rc is much smaller than the capillary length of water, 3.8 mm, no correction to this calculation is needed (32). The presence of the additional
acoustic force can reduce the droplet size at detachment (e.g., in Fig. S5A,
Rs,min = 0.63 mm, volume = 1.05 L). For hydrocarbons with a smaller
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Foresti et al.

surface tension, Rs,min decreases further. The lower limit is set by the critical
acoustic Bond number: if the acoustic eld is too strong, atomization occurs
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DNA Transfection. HeLa cells were transfected in our device by mixing a drop
of cells (at a concentration of 3,000 cells per microliter) in fully supplemented
medium with serum (DMEM; Sigma) and a drop of a stock solution containing
the transfection reagent (3 L of XtremeGENE HP; Roche) and a DNA
plasmid (1 g) encoding for enhanced GFP in 50 L (100 L) of serum-free
medium. The two drops fused by levitation were each 2.5 L in volume.
In general, the technique can also be applied to the study of incremental
transfections, in which several DNA plasmids can be introduced in the same
cells or in a multiple of the cell line. The temperature of the chamber was
maintained at 36 2 C, and the relative humidity was close to saturation.
A humid environment is necessary to slow down evaporation. The process was fully viable; the cells were mixed with the DNA solution in our
contactless manipulation platform (requiring a few seconds for merging
and remaining for 15 min in a steady levitation position) and were subsequently plated into a 96-well plate containing 50 L of fully supplemented
medium. After 18 h of incubation, GFP-positive cells were clearly detected
showing high levels of expression. The transfection efciency of the levitation protocol was comparable to that of the standard protocol conducted in microwells, whereas the amount of reagents used was reduced
by 5075%.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. We thank the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant 144397) for nancial support. We also thank Paolo DAleo
[Eidgenssische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zrich] for support with electronic
controls, Bruno Kramer (ETH Zrich) for the manufacturing of parts of the
experimental device, and Dr. Manish Tiwari (Laboratory of Thermodynamics
in Emerging Technologies, ETH Zrich) for helpful discussions.

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