Acoustic Trapping: An Emerging Tool for Microfabrication Technology

The high throughput deposition of microscale objects with precise spatial arrangement represents a key step in microfabrication technology. This can be done by creating physical boundaries to guide the deposition process or using printing technologies; in both approaches, these microscale objects cannot be further modified after they are formed. The utilization of dynamic acoustic fields offers a novel approach to facilitate real-time reconfigurable miniaturized systems in a contactless manner, which can potentially be used in physics, chemistry, biology, as well as materials science. Here, the physical interactions of microscale objects in an acoustic pressure field are discussed and how to fabricate different acoustic trapping devices and how to tune the spatial arrangement of the microscale objects are explained. Moreover, different approaches that can dynamically modulate microscale objects in acoustic fields are presented, and the potential applications of the microarrays in biomedical engineering, chemical/biochemical sensing, and materials science are highlighted alongside a discussion of future research challenges.