Surface acoustic wave diffraction driven mechanisms in microfluidic systems

Abstract

Acoustic forces arising from high-frequency surface acoustic waves (SAW) underpin an exciting range of promising techniques for non-contact manipulation of fluid and objects at micron scale. Despite increasing significance of SAW-driven technologies in microfluidics, the understanding of a broad range of phenomena occurring within an individual SAW system is limited. Acoustic effects including streaming and radiation force fields are often assumed to result from wave propagation in a simple planar fashion. The propagation patterns of a single SAW emanating from a finite-width source, however, cause a far richer range of physical effects. In this work, we seek a better understanding of the va..