Beyond the Langevin horn: transducer arrays for the acoustic levitation of liquid drops

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Morris, R.H. ORCID: 0000-0001-5511-3457, Dye, E.R. ORCID: 0000-0001-5425-619X, Docker, P. and Newton, M.I. ORCID: 0000-0003-4231-1002, 2019. Beyond the Langevin horn: transducer arrays for the acoustic levitation of liquid drops. Physics of Fluids, 31 (10): 101301. ISSN 1070-6631

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Official URL: http://doi.org/10.1063/1.5117335

Abstract

The acoustic levitation of liquid drops has been a key phenomenon for more than 40 years, driven partly by the ability to mimic a microgravity environment. It has seen more than 700 research articles published in this time and has seen a recent resurgence in the past 5 years, thanks to low cost developments. As well as investigating the basic physics of levitated drops, acoustic levitation has been touted for container free delivery of samples to a variety of measurements systems, most notably in various spectroscopy techniques including Raman and Fourier transform infrared in addition to numerous X-ray techniques. For 30 years, the workhorse of the acoustic levitation apparatus was a stack comprising a piezoelectric transducer coupled to a horn shaped radiative element often referred to as the Langevin horn. Decades of effort have been dedicated to such devices, paired with a matching and opposing device or a reflector, but they have a significant dependence on temperature and require precision alignment. The last decade has seen a significant shift away from these in favor of arrays of digitally driven, inexpensive transducers, giving a new dynamic to the topic which we review herein.

Item Type:

Journal article

Publication Title:

Physics of Fluids

Creators:

Morris, R.H., Dye, E.R., Docker, P. and Newton, M.I.

Publisher:

AIP Publishing

Date:

2019

Volume:

Number: