Spatio-temporally modulated inhomogeneous acoustic fields for probing mechanIcal properties of biological particles – STIMULE

The project is intended to investigate the potential of acoustic angular momentum as a new tool to distinguish particles with different mechanical propertiesr, relying on the spatio-temporal modulation of the acoustic fields. For the purpose of angular momentum manipulation tunable piezoelectric metamaterials will be utilized. Applying the spatio-temporal control on the metamaterial properties, the angular momentum of the generated surface wave or the vortex beam will be modified. In both these situations the interaction of the angular momentum with micro-particles will be studied. The possibilities to distinguish them according to their different responses to the angular momentum variations will be discussed. We expect to see changes in the motion patterns of particles of different mechanical properties due to different induced deformations. The experiments will be conducted on the prototypical particles as well as real biological cells.