Phononic-Crystal-Based Acoustic Sieve for Tunable Manipulations of Particles by a Highly Localized Radiation Force

The highly localized, periodic force induced by resonant transmission of acoustic waves via a phononic crystal is capable of trapping, aligning, sorting, and transferring large numbers of particles according to size or density, all in a tunable and scalable manner. This approach exploits a flexural mode unavailable to conventional optical techniques, using an engineered acoustic field to raise power transmission from the 10% predicted by classical theory to 60%. This advance has implications for cell sorting, additive materials fabrication, and targeted drug delivery.