Collaborators : Gabriel Dumy (PhD student between 2016 – 2019), Angelica Castro (Post-doc 2018-19)

We recently discovered that that the standard aggregation process of particles in acoustic levitation can be fully reversed. If properly enlightened, some particles can be violently ejected from the aggregation area, while staying inside the levitation plane.

Example of ejection of fluorescent particles. In the first part of the movie, the particles gather to form a large aggregate in the levitation plane. In the second part of the video, the particles are ejected when illuminated with their absorption wavelength.

These results have been presented for the first time during the 174th ASA Meeting, New Orleans, USA, in dec. 2017. It has been highlighted by the organizers :

https://acoustics.org/3apa7-moving-and-sorting-living-cells-with-sound-and-light-gabriel-dumy/

It will also be published soon in JASA.