Bubbles and liquid films resisting drainage, evaporation and nuclei-induced bursting

Soap bubbles are by essence fragile and ephemeral. Depending on their composition and environment, bubble bursting can be triggered by gravity-induced drainage and/or the evaporation of the liquid and/or the presence of nuclei. In this paper, we design bubbles made of a composite liquid shell able to neutralize all these effects and keep their integrity in a standard atmosphere. This composite material is obtained in a simple way by replacing surfactants by partially-wetting microparticles and water by a water/glycerol mixture. A nonlinear model able to predict the evolution of these composite bubbles toward an equilibrium state is proposed and quantitatively compared to experimental data. This work unveils a composite liquid film with unique robustness, which can easily be manufactured to design complex objects.

Cell selective manipulation with single beam acoustical tweezers

Acoustical tweezers open major prospects in microbiology for cells and microorganisms contactless manipulation, organization and mechanical properties testing since they are biocompatible, label-free and can exert forces several orders of magnitude larger than their optical counterpart at equivalent wave power. Yet, these tremendous perspectives have so far been hindered by the absence of selectivity of existing acoustical tweezers -- i.e., the ability to select and move objects individually -- and/or their limited resolution restricting their use to large particle manipulation only. Here, we report precise selective contactless manipulation and positioning of human cells in a standard microscopy environment, without altering their viability. Trapping forces of up to $sim$ 200 pN are reported with less than 2 mW of driving power. The unprecedented selectivity, miniaturization and trapping force are achieved by combining holography with active materials and fabrication techniques derived from the semi-conductor industry to synthesize specific wavefields (called focused acoustical vortices) designed to produce stiff localized traps. We anticipate this work to be a starting point toward widespread applications of acoustical tweezers in fields as diverse as tissue engineering, cell mechano-transduction analysis, neural network study or mobile microorganisms imaging, for which precise manipulation and/or controlled application of stresses is mandatory.

Folding a focalized acoustical vortex on a flat holographic transducer: miniaturized selective acoustical tweezers

Acoustical tweezers based on focalized acoustical vortices hold the promise of precise contactless 3D manipulation of millimeter down to sub-micrometer particles, microorganisms and cells with unprecedented combined selectivity and trapping force. Yet, the widespread dissemination of this technology has been hindered by severe limitations of current systems in terms of performance and/or miniaturization and integrability. In this paper, we unleash the potential of focalized acoustical vortices by developing the first flat, compact, single-electrodes focalized acoustical tweezers. These tweezers rely on holographic Archimedes-Fermat spiraling transducers obtained by folding a spherical acoustical vortex on a flat piezoelectric substrate. We demonstrate the ability of these tweezers to grab and displace micrometric objects in a standard microfluidic environment with unique selectivity. The simplicity of this system and its scalability to higher frequencies opens tremendous perspectives in microbiology, microrobotics and microscopy.