Chinese Academy of Sciences team moves objects across scales with an electronics-free plate

A team from the Institute of Acoustics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with Hefei University of Technology, has published research in Advanced Science showing that a single pre-designed plate, with no electronic equipment, can rotate, orbit and hold particles and components in place.

The team etched the phase information needed for manipulation into maze-like microstructures on the plate, so a single-channel excitation is enough to generate a controllable vortex wave field; conventional approaches require complex multi-channel electronic control systems.

Experiments spanned sub-millimeter particles to centimeter-scale lightweight components, with holding, orbiting and direction reversal. Per CCTV News, the application outlook remains the team's own projection, and the result has not yet been replicated by other laboratories.