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Ultrasonic metamaterials with negative modulus

Nature Materials volume 5, pages 452–456 (2006)Cite this article

Abstract

The emergence of artificially designed subwavelength electromagnetic materials, denoted metamaterials1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, has significantly broadened the range of material responses found in nature. However, the acoustic analogue to electromagnetic metamaterials has, so far, not been investigated. We report a new class of ultrasonic metamaterials consisting of an array of subwavelength Helmholtz resonators with designed acoustic inductance and capacitance. These materials have an effective dynamic modulus with negative values near the resonance frequency. As a result, these ultrasonic metamaterials can convey acoustic waves with a group velocity antiparallel to phase velocity, as observed experimentally. On the basis of homogenized-media theory, we calculated the dispersion and transmission, which agrees well with experiments near 30 kHz. As the negative dynamic modulus leads to a richness of surface states with very large wavevectors, this new class of acoustic metamaterials may offer interesting applications, such as acoustic negative refraction and superlensing below the diffraction limit.

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Figure 1: A new class of ultrasonic metamaterials consisting of arrays of subwavelength Helmholtz resonators.
Figure 2: Ultrasonic experiments demonstrating the negative dynamic modulus of the acoustic metamaterials near 32 kHz.
Figure 3: Measured and calculated transmission (amplitude ratio) as a function of frequency between upstream and downstream detectors.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the ONR/DARPA Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) (grant N00014-01-1-0803) and the NSF Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC) (grant DMI-0327077). The authors also thank A. Mal at the University of California, Los Angeles for allowing us to use his ultrasonic measurement facilities.

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  1. Nano-scale Science and Engineering Center, 5130 Etcheverry Hall, University of California, Berkeley, California, 94720-1740, USA

    Nicholas Fang, Dongjuan Xi, Jianyi Xu, Muralidhar Ambati, Werayut Srituravanich, Cheng Sun & Xiang Zhang

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Correspondence to Xiang Zhang.

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Fang, N., Xi, D., Xu, J. et al. Ultrasonic metamaterials with negative modulus. Nature Mater 5, 452–456 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1644

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