Case Study: SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering achieves accurate SAW device design and acoustic-streaming insights with COMSOL

Numerical simulations are helping researchers understand the interplay between surface acoustic waves and microfluidic flow

SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering faced the challenge of designing microfluidic actuators that use surface acoustic waves (SAWs) for acoustic streaming; because piezoelectric substrates like 128° Y-cut lithium niobate are anisotropic, the team needed to understand SAW propagation across the whole surface to enable non‑linear, focusing device geometries. To address this, researchers used Comsol’s COMSOL Multiphysics software, including the Piezoelectric Devices interface, to simulate wave behavior and device responses.

Using Comsol, CNSE simulated resonant frequencies, phase velocities, and displacement fields at multiple orientations and validated the results against fabricated interdigitated‑transducer devices, finding close agreement (relative errors mostly under ~1.2%, and as low as 0.03% for some orientations). The simulations also correlated vertical surface displacement with measured streaming velocities, accelerating design decisions, reducing prototyping time, and enabling optimized device geometries for efficient acoustic streaming.

SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering

Graham Potter

Graduate Researcher