Phase-modulated pulsing coherent acoustic tweezers for dynamic adjustable spaced particle patterning

Acoustic tweezer technique with non-contact micro-object manipulation capability has been widely utilized for particle patterning in the fields of cell arraying, target drug delivery, and functional composite fabrication. However, the manipulation resolution of acoustic tweezer device is decided by the configuration of interdigital transducers (IDTs), which is half the wavelength of surface acoustic waves (SAWs). This limitation severely reduces the manipulation versatility of acoustic tweezer devices. To address this limitation, we propose a novel approach that employs phase-modulated pulsing coherent SAWs. This method can halve the patterning spacing and allows for customization of the spacing based on specific manipulation demands. Our proposed technique increases the flexibility and manipulation resolution of acoustic tweezer device, and thus can be widely applied to reconfigurable assembly and precise manipulation of particles and cells.