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Reconfigurable surface acoustic wave platform for particle concentration, sorting and in situ Raman identification on a single lithium niobate chip
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A lab-built chip uses sound waves to sort and trap tiny plastic pieces, including microplastic fragments, for identification. Tests showed it concentrated and sorted plastic particles by size, and held irregular PET fragments in place long enough to identify the plastic type using a light-based scanning method, even in pond water samples.
Abstract Environmental microplastics occur predominantly as irregular fragments and fibers, whose acoustic manipulation is complicated by shape-dependent radiation forces and torques. We report a reconfigurable acoustofluidic platform fabricated on a 128° Y-cut LiNbO3 substrate that provides three surface acoustic wave (SAW) operating configurations on a single chip without device modification: traveling SAW for pre-concentration and size-dependent sorting, standing SAW for positioning particles into pressure nodes, and a focused standing-wave configuration generated by opposing curved interdigital transducers (IDTs) for localized trapping. The individual functions were characterized separately; continuous sorting of polydisperse polyethylene microspheres achieved a mean large-fraction deflection of 91.8% (n = 3). Focused acoustic gradients retain irregular polyethylene terephthalate (PET) fragments of 20-60 µm within the Raman focal region under continuous flow at 1 µL/min, despite residual rotation. Retention is sustained for at least 30 s, sufficient for in situ Raman identification of trapped polyethylene, polystyrene and PET; diagnostic PET bands were also recovered from pond water spiked with fragments. The results show that concentration, sorting and spectroscopic identification can each be performed on a single micromachined device, providing a basis for label-free sample preparation.
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