A super-material that bends, shapes and focuses sound waves that pass through it has been invented by scientists.
The creation pushes the boundaries of metamaterials – a new class of finely-engineered surfaces that perform nature-defying tasks.
These materials have already shown remarkable results with light manipulation, allowing scientists to create a real-life version of Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak, for example.
But a research team from the Universities of Sussex and Bristol have now shown that they also work with sound waves, which could transform medical imaging and personal audio.
Finely shaped sound fields are used in medical imaging and therapy as well as in a wide range of consumer products such as audio spotlights and ultrasonic haptics. The research published today (Monday 27 February 2017) in Nature Communications shows a simple and cheap way of creating these shaped sound waves using acoustic metamaterials.
The collaborative research team assembled a metamaterial layer out of lots of small bricks that each coil up space. The space coiling bricks act to slow down the sound meaning that incoming sound waves can be transformed into any required sound field.
The new metamaterial layers could be used in many applications. Large versions could be used to direct or focus sound to a particular location and form an audio hotspot. Much smaller versions could be used to focus high intensity ultrasound to destroy tumours deep within the body. Here, a metamaterial layer could be tailor-made to fit the body of a patient and tuned to focus the ultrasound waves where they are needed most. In both cases the layer could be fitted to existing loudspeaker technology and be made rapidly and cheaply.
Dr Gianluca Memoli, from the Interact Lab at the University of Sussex who led the study, said: “Our metamaterial bricks can be 3D printed and then assembled together to form any sound field you can imagine. We also showed how this can be achieved with only a small number of different bricks. You can think of a box of our metamaterial bricks as a do-it-yourself acoustics kit.
Professor Sriram Subramanian, Head of the Interact Lab at the University of Sussex, added: “We want to create acoustic devices that manipulate sound with the same ease and flexibility with which LCDs and projectors do to light. Our research opens the door to new acoustic devices combining diffraction, scattering and refraction, and enables the future development of fully digital spatial sound modulators, which can be controlled in real time with minimal resources.”
Bruce Drinkwater, Professor of Ultrasonics at the University of Bristol, explained: “In the future I think there will be many exciting applications of this technology. We are now working on making the metamaterial layers dynamically reconfigurable. This will mean we can make cheap imaging systems which could be used either for medical diagnostics or crack detection.”
Learn more: Sound-shaping super-material invented
[osd_subscribe categories=’metamaterials’ placeholder=’Email Address’ button_text=’Subscribe Now for any new posts on the topic “METAMATERIALS”‘]
Receive an email update when we add a new METAMATERIALS article.
The Latest on: Super-material
[google_news title=”” keyword=”super-material” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
via Google News
The Latest on: Super-material
- Scientists use salt, water to prove human brain-like computer can existon April 26, 2024 at 4:13 am
The artificial synapse known as an iontronic memristor functions as a microchannel filled with a solution of water and salt.
- First experimental proof for brain-like computer with water and salton April 25, 2024 at 7:03 am
Theoretical physicists at Utrecht University, together with experimental physicists at Sogang University in South Korea, have succeeded in building an artificial synapse. This synapse works with water ...
- Emulating neurodegeneration and aging in artificial intelligence systemson April 24, 2024 at 3:30 am
In recent years, developers have introduced artificial intelligence (AI) systems that can simulate or reproduce various human abilities, such as recognizing objects in images, answering questions, and ...
- What Synapse's bankruptcy means for the BaaS modelon April 23, 2024 at 9:06 am
The banking-as-a-service middleware provider will be acquired by TabaPay. Other middleware providers may be forced to evolve or face the same fate.
- Aionic Digital Unveils Synapse – The AI-Powered Universal Connector Revolutionizing Data Integrationon April 22, 2024 at 3:54 pm
Aionic Digital, a leader in artificial intelligence (AI), technology consulting, and systems integrations solutions for data management, systems integrations, customer engagement, and eCommerce, is ...
- Intel Develops World's Largest Neuromorphic Computer System for Advancing AI Researchon April 22, 2024 at 12:50 am
Intel has developed the world's largest neuromorphic computer system, a hardware stack modeled after the complexities of the human brain.
- World’s largest neuromorphic computer by Intel works like human brainon April 19, 2024 at 5:33 am
I ntel has announced the launch of the world’s largest neuromorphic computer system, Hala Point. Initially deployed at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, the computer mimics the human brain ...
- Intel Reveals World’s Largest ‘Brain-Inspired’ Neuromorphic Computeron April 19, 2024 at 2:33 am
In a recent development, scientists at Intel have built the world's largest neuromorphic computer. The computer is designed ...
- Intel's Hala Point, the world's largest neuromorphic computer, has 1.15 billion neuronson April 18, 2024 at 7:37 am
The Hala Point system's 1,152 Loihi 2 chips enable a total of 1.15 billion artificial neurons, Intel said, "and 128 billion synapses distributed over 140,544 neuromorphic processing cores." That is an ...
via Bing News