ESPCI web site
Single beam acoustic tweezers
Today, remote handling of tiny objects is efficiently performed by optical tweezers. They are quite efficient to handle particles ranging in size from a few micrometers to hundreds of nanometers and apply forces in the range of tens of picoNewton. However, for larger forces or larger objects, heating or photo-toxicity are recognized issues. At equal incident beam power acoustical forces overtake by five orders of magnitude optical ones. I will present the trapping of elastic particles by the large radiation force of a single acoustical beam in the three dimensions. This acoustical tweezers is obtained with a forward propagating helicoidal beam.