Captured by a Soundnado
A new type of “acoustic tweezer” uses a tornado of ultrasound in liquids to trap particles in place and then levitate them by cranking up the volume. The technology, developed by ECE Professor Steve Cummer and postdoc Junfei Li, could be useful to any field where particles need trapping, moving and patterning without being touched, such as controlling chemical reactions, testing for disease, or engineering biological tissues.