The presence of reactive species in plasma-activated water is known to induce oxidative stresses in bacterial species, which can result in their inactivation. By integrating a microfludic chipscale nebulizer driven by surface acoustic waves (SAWs) with a low-temperature atmospheric plasma source, we demonstrate an efficient technique for in situ production and application of plasma-activated aerosols for surface disinfection. Unlike bulk conventional systems wherein the water is separately batch-treated within a container, we show in this work the first demonstration of continuous plasma-treatment of water as it is transported through a paper strip from a reservoir onto the chipscale SAW device. The significantly larger surface area to volume ratio of the water within the paper strip leads to a significant reduction in the duration of the plasma-treatment, while maintaining the concentration of the reactive species. The subsequent nebulization of the plasma-activated water by the SAW then allows the generation of plasma-activated aerosols, which can be directly sprayed onto the contaminated surface, therefore eliminating the storage of the plasma-activated water and hence circumventing the typical limitation in conventional systems wherein the concentration of the reactive species diminishes over time during storage, resulting in a reduction in the efficacy of bacterial inactivation. In particular, we show up to 96% reduction in Escherichia coli colonies through direct spraying with the plasma-activated aerosols. This novel, low-cost, portable and energy-efficient hybrid system necessitates only minimal maintenance as it only requires the supply of tap water and battery power for operation, and is thus suitable for decontamination in home environments.
There is a pressing need for efficient biological treatment systems for the removal of organic compounds in greywater given the rapid increase in household wastewater produced as a consequence of rapid urbanisation. Moreover, proper treatment of greywater allows its reuse that can significantly reduce the demand for freshwater supplies. Herein, we demonstrate the possibility of enhancing the removal efficiency of solid contaminants from greywater using MHz-order surface acoustic waves (SAWs). A key distinction of the use of these high frequency surface acoustic waves, compared to previous work on its lower frequency (kHz order) bulk ultrasound counterpart for wastewater treatment, is the absence of cavitation, which can inflict considerable damage on bacteria, thus limiting the intensity and duration, and hence the efficiency enhancement, associated with the acoustic exposure. In particular, we show that up to fivefold improvement in the removal efficiency can be obtained, primarily due to the ability of the acoustic pressure field in homogenizing and reducing the size of bacterial clusters in the sample, therefore providing a larger surface area that promotes greater bacteria digestion. Alternatively, the SAW exposure allows the reduction in the treatment duration to achieve a given level of removal efficiency, thus facilitating higher treatment rates and hence processing throughput. Given the low-cost of the miniature chipscale platform, these promising results highlight its possibility for portable greywater treatment for domestic use or for large-scale industrial wastewater processing through massive parallelization.
The deposition of a thin graphene film atop a chip scale piezoelectric substrate on which surface acoustic waves are excited is observed to enhance its performance for fluid transport and manipulation considerably, which can be exploited to achieve further efficiency gains in these devices. Such gains can then enable complete integration and miniaturization for true portability for a variety of microfluidic applications across drug delivery, biosensing and point-of-care diagnostics, among others, where field-use, point-of-collection or point-of-care functionality is desired. In addition to a first demonstration of vibration-induced molecular transport in graphene films, we show that the coupling of the surface acoustic wave gives rise to antisymmetric Lamb waves in the film which enhance molecular diffusion and hence the flow through the interstitial layers that make up the film. Above a critical input power, the strong substrate vibration displacement can also force the molecules out of the graphene film to form a thin fluid layer, which subsequently destabilizes and breaks up to form a mist of micron dimension aerosol droplets. We provide physical insight into this coupling through a simple numerical model, verified through experiments, and show several-fold improvement in the rate of fluid transport through the film, and up to 55% enhancement in the rate of fluid atomization from the film using this simple method.
We exploit the possibility of enhancing the molecular transport of liquids through graphene films using amplitude modulated surface acoustic waves (SAWs) to demonstrate effective and efficient nanoparticle filtration. The use of the SAW, which is an extremely efficient means for driving microfluidic transport, overcomes the need for the large mechanical pumps required to circumvent the large pressure drops encountered in conventional membranes for nanoparticle filtration. 100% filtration efficiency was obtained for micron-dimension particulates, decreasing to only 95% for the filtration of particles of tens of nanometers in dimension, which is comparable to that achieved with other methods. To circumvent clogging of the film, which is typical with all membrane filters, a backwash operation to flush the nanoparticles is incorporated simply by reversing the SAW-induced flow such that 98% recovery of the initial filtration rate is recovered. Given these efficiencies, together with the low cost and compact size of the chipscale SAW devices, we envisage the possibility of scaling out the process by operating a large number of devices in parallel to achieve typical industrial-scale throughputs with potential benefits in terms of substantially lower capital, operating and maintenance costs.
The development of alternative techniques to efficiently inactivate bacterial suspensions is crucial to prevent transmission of waterborne illness, particularly when commonly used techniques such as heating, filtration, chlorination, or ultraviolet treatment are not practical or feasible. We examine the effect of MHz-order acoustic wave irradiation in the form of surface acoustic waves (SAWs) on Gram-positive (Escherichia coli) and Gram-negative (Brevibacillus borstelensis and Staphylococcus aureus) bacteria suspended in water droplets. A significant increase in the relative bacterial load reduction of colony-forming units (up to 74%) can be achieved by either increasing (1) the excitation power, or, (2) the acoustic treatment duration, which we attributed to the effect of the acoustic radiation force exerted on the bacteria. Consequently, by increasing the maximum pressure amplitude via a hybrid modulation scheme involving a combination of amplitude and pulse-width modulation, we observe that the bacterial inactivation efficiency can be further increased by approximately 14%. By combining this scalable acoustic-based bacterial inactivation platform with plasma-activated water, a 100% reduction in E. coli is observed in less than 10 mins, therefore demonstrating the potential of the synergistic effects of MHz-order acoustic irradiation and plasma-activated water as an efficient strategy for water decontamination.
Underwater wireless communications refer to transmitting data in an unguided water environment by wireless carriers including acoustic, radio frequency (RF), and optical waves. Relative to acoustic and RF, the optical wave is more promising to offer higher bandwidth at a lower energy consumption rate. However, an optical wave has its challenges such as attenuation due to absorption, scattering and turbulence effects. Therefore, this work attempts to investigate the performance of lightwave propagation for underwater optical wireless communication (UOWC) using simulation and experimental approaches. First, the performance of optical waves was analyzed using MATLAB by simulating the light attenuation model which based on depth-dependent chlorophyll concentration. A depth profile that related to the surface chlorophyll levels for the range 0-4 mg/m3 was used to represent the open ocean. The simulation showed that the attenuation of light less affected for operating wavelength range of 450 – 550 nm. Further, an experimental set-up was developed which consists of a transmitter, receiver, and aquarium to emulate the UOWC channel. Three types of water including clear, sea and cloudy were tested to analyze their interaction with the light emitted by a light-emitting diode (LED) and a laser diode. The emitted light detected by the light sensor and the strength of an audio signal transmitted through the UOWC were measured using a light meter and sound meter respectively. The measured power was plotted against distance and the attenuation constant c was deduced through curve fitting method. The analysis showed irrespective of the light sources, UOWC in cloudy water suffered the highest attenuation relative to still clear and seawater. The received power emitted by laser was at least 41% higher than the LED. This study contributes to identify the potential and limitations of different operating schemes to optimize UOWC performance.
The Miniaturised Lab-on-a-Disc (miniLOAD) platform, which utilises surface acoustic waves (SAWs) to drive the rotation of thin millimeter-scale discs on which microchannels can be fabricated and hence microfluidic operations can be performed, offers the possibility of miniaturising its larger counterpart, the Lab-on-a-CD, for true portability in point-of-care applications. A significant limitation of the original miniLOAD concept, however, is that it does not allow for flexible control over the disc rotation direction and speed without manual adjustment of the disc's position, or the use of multiple devices to alter the SAW frequency. In this work, we demonstrate the possibility of achieving such control with the use of tapered interdigitated transducers to confine a SAW beam such that the localised acoustic streaming it generates imparts a force, through hydrodynamic shear, at a specific location on the disc. Varying the torque that arises as a consequence by altering the input frequency to the transducers then allows the rotational velocity and direction of the disc to be controlled with ease. We derive a simple predictive model to illustrate the principle by which this occurs, which we find agrees well with the experimental measurements.
Gallium Nitride (GaN) is considered as the second most popular semiconductor material in industry after silicon. This is due to its wide applications encompassing Light Emitting Diode (LED) and power electronics. In addition, its piezoelectric properties are fascinating to be explored as electromechanical material for the development of diverse microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) application. In this article, we conducted a theoretical study concerning surface mode propagation, especially Rayleigh and Sezawa mode in the layered GaN/sapphire structure with the presence of various guiding layers. It is demonstrated that the increase in thickness of guiding layer will decrease the phase velocities of surface mode depending on the material properties of the layer. In addition, the Q-factor value indicating the resonance properties of surface mode appeared to be affected with the presence of fluid domain, particularly in the Rayleigh mode. Meanwhile, the peak for Sezawa mode shows the highest Q factor and is not altered by the presence of fluid. Based on these theoretical results using the finite element method, it could contribute to the development of a GaN-based device to generate surface acoustic wave, especially in Sezawa mode which could be useful in acoustophoresis, lab on-chip and microfluidics applications.
Following rapid technological and industrial development, factories have been equipped with a great deal of machines.
The blend of industrial and residential areas in turn resulted in many environmental problems. In particular, machine
operation causes noise pollution that easily causes physiological and psychological discomfort for the human body thus
makes noise abatement a crucial and urgent issue. In this study, vermiculite functional fillers were added to polyurethane
(PU) foam mixtures in order to form sound absorbent PU foams. The correlations between the contents of functional fillers
and the sound absorption of flexible and rigid PU foams were then examined. The optimal PU foams were combined with
PET/carbon fiber matrices in order to yield the electromagnetic shielding effectiveness. The sound absorption, noise
reduction coefficient (NRC), electromagnetic shielding effectiveness and resilience rate of the composite boards were
finally evaluated. The test results indicated that rigid PU foam composites can reach a sound absorption coefficient of
0.8 while the flexible PU foam composites have higher mechanical properties.
In order to understand the characteristics of acoustic wave propagation in rocks within seismic frequency band (<100
Hz), the velocities of longitudinal and transverse waves of four different types of rocks were tested using low-frequency
stress-strain method by means of the physical testing system of rock at low frequency and the experimental data of acoustic
velocities of four different types of rocks at this frequency band were obtained. The experimental results showed that the
acoustic velocities of four different types of rocks increased with the increase of temperature and pressure within the
temperature and pressure ranges set by the experiment. The acoustic velocity of fine sandstone at 50% water saturation
was smaller than that of dry sample. The acoustic velocities of four different types of rocks were different and the velocities
of longitudinal waves of gritstone, fine sandstone, argillaceous siltstone and mudstone increased in turn under similar
conditions and were smaller than those at ultrasonic frequency. Few of existing studies focus on the acoustic velocity at
seismic frequency band, thus, further understanding of the acoustic characteristics at this seismic frequency band still
requires more experimental data.
The endangered proboscis monkey (Nasalis larvatus) is a sexually highly dimorphic Old World primate endemic to the island of Borneo. Previous studies focused mainly on its ecology and behavior, but knowledge of its vocalizations is limited. The present study provides quantified information on vocal rate and on the vocal acoustics of the prominent calls of this species. We audio-recorded vocal behavior of 10 groups over two 4-month periods at the Lower Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary in Sabah, Borneo. We observed monkeys and recorded calls in evening and morning sessions at sleeping trees along riverbanks. We found no differences in the vocal rate between evening and morning observation sessions. Based on multiparametric analysis, we identified acoustic features of the four common call-types "shrieks," "honks," "roars," and "brays." "Chorus" events were also noted in which multiple callers produced a mix of vocalizations. The four call-types were distinguishable based on a combination of fundamental frequency variation, call duration, and degree of voicing. Three of the call-types can be considered as "loud calls" and are therefore deemed promising candidates for non-invasive, vocalization-based monitoring of proboscis monkeys for conservation purposes.