Microscale thermoacoustic streaming

Acoustic fields carry energy and can excert forces if the sound scattes upon interacting with an object or a local variation in the acoustic properties of the medium through which it travels. If a fluid becomes heated, its mechanical properties change.

An acoustic field in combination with an externally imposed thermal field can thus lead to acoustic forces in the fluid and fast thermoacoustic streaming.

This project is about thermoacoustic streaming inside microchannels, that I recently discovered and which I envision will enable precise manipulation of cells and objects at the micro-scale.

In the project, we will investigate experimentally the physics, and potential applications of this effect.The program includes several novel concepts and approaches that go well beyond the state-of-the-art and that have potential to be groundbreaking.

To exemplify: (1) The first study of the temporal development of thermoacoustic streaming. (2) Triggered cell sorting based on highly localized thermoacoustic streaming. (3) The first study of how the thermal properties and the geometry affect the resulting thermoacoustic streaming. (4) Combining higher order acoustic fields with structured light to generate reconfigurable microscale flow fields. (5) The first experimental study of thermoacoustic effects on heated micro-spheres. (6) Cell-separation based on selective heating of cells.