Acoustics articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pulse tube refrigerators are a critical enabling technology for many disciplines that require low temperatures, including quantum computing. Here, the authors show that dynamically optimizing the acoustic parameters of the refrigerator can improve conventional cooldown speeds up to 3.5 times.

    • Ryan Snodgrass
    • , Vincent Kotsubo
    •  & Joel Ullom

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here the authors integrate optical and acoustic manipulation techniques to generate localized Lamb fields that emulate arbitrary laser patterns and demonstrate programmable nanoparticle patterning over a centimeter-scale area.

    • Ruoqin Zhang
    • , Xichuan Zhao
    •  & Feng Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Achieving a wide angular response in single layer acoustic metalenses is challenging. By leveraging perfect acoustic symmetry conversion, the authors realize an aberration free metalens with a wide field-of-hearing, up to 140 degrees.

    • Dongwoo Lee
    • , Beomseok Oh
    •  & Junsuk Rho

  • Article
    | Open Access

    High-contrast ultrasonic imaging holds significant importance in biomedical and engineering applications. Here, the authors present a compact spatial differentiator tailored for underwater isotropic edge-enhanced imaging, facilitating the realization of high-contrast ultrasonic imaging.

    • Yurou Jia
    • , Suying Zhang
    •  & Xiaojun Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In contrast to the commonly studied optical frequency combs, here, the authors demonstrate a radio frequency system able to wirelessly and passively generate frequency combs as a battery-free solution for far-field ranging of unmanned vehicles in GPS-denied settings.

    • Hussein M. E. Hussein
    • , Seunghwi Kim
    •  & Cristian Cassella

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Vortex string, hypothetical topological defects in cosmology, are predicted to support massless chiral modes. The authors successfully mimicked vortex-string physics in a metamaterial system and experimentally observed the chiral modes within it.

    • Jingwen Ma
    • , Ding Jia
    •  & Xiang Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Artificial magnetic fields have been meticulously engineered in a 3D acoustic crystal, facilitating the creation of 3D flat bands through Landau quantization of quasiparticles arising from nodal-ring band degeneracies.

    • Zheyu Cheng
    • , Yi-Jun Guan
    •  & Baile Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors introduce a method for non-destructive testing based on circularly polarized ultrasound in solids, enabled by metamaterials, allows for detecting internal defects regardless of their orientation. This innovation will redefine ultrasonic non-destructive examination.

    • Jeseung Lee
    • , Minwoo “Joshua” Kweun
    •  & Yoon Young Kim

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Indoor sound fields are disordered due to reflections and multiple scattering, which scrambles acoustic communication. Here, based on tunable metasurfaces and communication theories, the authors demonstrate multi-channel, multi-spectral, cross-talk-free acoustic communication in a room.

    • Hongkuan Zhang
    • , Qiyuan Wang
    •  & Guancong Ma

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Controlling spin direction is the key for spintronic devices as it induces efficient and field-free switching. Herein, the authors propose using lattice vibrations in acoustic devices to replace the charge motion in conventional spintronic devices to realize the rotation of spin direction, that is, acoustic spin rotation. Acoustic spin rotation offers higher efficiency than spin rotation in conventional charge-current based spintronic devices.

    • Yang Cao
    • , Hao Ding
    •  & Dezheng Yang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Breakthrough ultrasonic imaging captures objects behind barriers. Leveraging Fabry-Perot resonance with a unique resonance-tailoring panel, our method allows imaging through high-impedance barriers helping to revolutionise underwater and brain imaging.

    • Chung Il Park
    • , Seungah Choe
    •  & Yoon Young Kim

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Airy-Talbot effect is experimentally demonstrated for spoof surface acoustic waves in a structured metasurface. Owing to its self-imaging and self-healing properties, the authors achieve robust multipath transmission of nonperiodic signals.

    • Hao-xiang Li
    • , Jing-jing Liu
    •  & Johan Christensen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ultrasound is a flexible and powerful medical tool. Yet, brain imaging has remained elusive so far for ultrasound due to the blurring induced by the skull. Here, a 3D non-invasive approach is proposed to make the skull digitally transparent and image brain tissues at unprecedented resolution.

    • Flavien Bureau
    • , Justine Robin
    •  & Alexandre Aubry

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Some systems can exhibit topologically non-trivial characteristics only when specific coordinate transformations are applied. Here, the authors report on a family of metamaterials whose topological properties are unveiled in higher order coordinates (such as strain) and predicts that topological edge states can exist for diverse boundary conditions.

    • Florian Allein
    • , Adamantios Anastasiadis
    •  & Georgios Theocharis

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The researchers report a class of silica-nanoparticle-decorated bacteria-cellulose ultrasonic metasurfaces that feature excellent stability in water and mechanical processability. They demonstrate it as holographic meta-lens and 3D imaging meta-lens.

    • Zong-Lin Li
    • , Kun Chen
    •  & Xue-Feng Zhu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Experiments show how confined microbubbles in a viscous gel can be controllably moved by means of an acoustic field. Ensembles of such microbubbles can be made to self-assemble into a train-like arrangement, which can trap, transport and release microparticles.

    • Jakub Janiak
    • , Yuyang Li
    •  & Daniel Ahmed

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Recent theoretical works reveal that the topologically nontrivial exceptional points can guarantee the geometry-dependent skin effect, but it remains to be confirmed by experiments. Here the authors realize a reciprocal non-Hermitian phononic crystal with exceptional points, and observe the geometry-dependent skin effect.

    • Qiuyan Zhou
    • , Jien Wu
    •  & Zhengyou Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Controlling audible sound requires inherently broadband and subwavelength acoustic solutions. Exploiting the unique physics of plasmacoustic metalayers, we experimentally demonstrate versatile and tunable sound control over a wide frequency range.

    • Stanislav Sergeev
    • , Romain Fleury
    •  & Hervé Lissek

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors combined optical traps and frequency combs to create new acoustic technology – a mechanical frequency comb. The generation of this comb does not require any precision control, making it uniquely positioned for sensing, metrology, and quantum technology.

    • Matthijs H. J. de Jong
    • , Adarsh Ganesan
    •  & Richard A. Norte

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors constructed ideal acoustic metamaterials to realize non-abelian braiding of band nodes and provided the first compelling experimental evidence, at the wavefunction level, for the creation, collision, braiding, and repulsion of band nodes.

    • Huahui Qiu
    • , Qicheng Zhang
    •  & Chunyin Qiu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here the authors investigate a comprehensive topological phase diagram of bilayer hexagonal acoustic lattice, including ideal quantum spin Hall phase with gapless helical edge states. They realize a broadband topological slow wave.

    • Xiao-Chen Sun
    • , Hao Chen
    •  & Yan-Feng Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding and controlling symmetry in nature is of paramount importance. In this work, the authors reveal an unexpected effect of the general duality relation between piezoelectricity and piezomagnetism on their symmetries, enabling novel phononic Chern insulators.

    • Qicheng Zhang
    • , Li He
    •  & A. T. Charlie Johnson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Projective representations of crystal symmetries are indispensable for understanding artificial crystals. Here, authors establish a unified theory of projective crystal symmetries with time-reversal invariance, and construct models for all 458 projective symmetry algebras for the 17 two-dimensional wallpaper groups.

    • Z. Y. Chen
    • , Zheng Zhang
    •  & Y. X. Zhao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In this work the authors uncover a transient non-Hermitian skin effect. Using a passive system, they confirm the exact evolution of NHSE by leveraging the complex-frequency excitation. This demonstration can be extended to other non-Hermitian phenomena in various passive systems.

    • Zhongming Gu
    • , He Gao
    •  & Jie Zhu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The application of rolling motion to microswarm navigation and cargo delivery has been constrained by the need for a physical boundary to roll along to date. Here, Zhang et al. solve this problem by introducing a reconfigurable virtual wall implemented by a combination of magnetic and acoustic fields.

    • Zhiyuan Zhang
    • , Alexander Sukhov
    •  & Daniel Ahmed

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Lab-on-a-chip systems have been widely used in microscale liquid manipulation and greatly benefit from automation. Durrer et al. show a robot-assisted acoustofluidic end effector system, comprising a robotic arm and an acoustofluidic device, that combines both robotic and microfluidic functionalities.

    • Jan Durrer
    • , Prajwal Agrawal
    •  & Daniel Ahmed

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fluid-solid interaction, long investigated, is mostly neglected in topological acoustics. Here the authors find that it can give rise to intriguing topological phenomena in simple phononic crystals due to intrinsic differences between sound in fluid and solid.

    • Xiaoxiao Wu
    • , Haiyan Fan
    •  & Xiang Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors present an approach to underwater imaging, which does not require tethering or batteries. The low-power camera uses power from harvested acoustic energy and communicates colour images wirelessly via acoustic backscatter.

    • Sayed Saad Afzal
    • , Waleed Akbar
    •  & Fadel Adib

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Single-wall carbon nanotubes are made of carbon with diameters less than 100 nanometers. Here, the authors engineer an analogue tube with a diameter 1,000,000 times larger with the aim to explore topological properties including unusual acoustic edge states.

    • Zhiwang Zhang
    • , Penglin Gao
    •  & Johan Christensen

  • Perspective
    | Open Access

    Acoustic techniques are moving towards the clinic. Here the authors highlight recent developments in the areas of acoustic mechanobiology, point-of-care diagnostics, in vivo manipulation and tissues engineering, and provide their thoughts on the current challenges and directions for future work.

    • Joseph Rufo
    • , Peiran Zhang
    •  & Tony Jun Huang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    .Sensitive detection of weak acoustic signals at nanometer scale is challenging. Here, the authors present an acoustic detection system based on a single molecule as a probe, where frequency and amplitude of acoustic vibrations can be extracted from its minute variations in distance to the surface of a plasmonic gold nanorod.

    • Mingcai Xie
    • , Hanyu Liu
    •  & Yuxi Tian

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Topological states are exploited based on crystalline symmetry, but under artificial gauge fields, symmetries may satisfy projective algebras, which remains less studied. Here, the authors reveal that projective symmetry algebra leads to momentum-space nonsymmorphic symmetry, resulting in new topological states over a momentum-space Klein bottle.

    • Z. Y. Chen
    • , Shengyuan A. Yang
    •  & Y. X. Zhao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Photo- and thermo-activated polymerization and melting processes are dominant in Additive Manufacturing (AM) while ultrasound activated sonochemical reactions have not been explored for AM so far. Here, the authors demonstrate 3D printing of structures using acoustic cavitation produced directly by focused ultrasound which creates sonochemical reactions in highly localized cavitation regions.

    • Mohsen Habibi
    • , Shervin Foroughi
    •  & Muthukumaran Packirisamy

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Acoustic waves can be used to manipulate particles and fluids in biomedical applications. The authors show that slip at the fluid-solid interface, characterized by a lower acoustic transmission into the fluid, is similar to Amontons-Coulomb friction, as found between solids. 

    • Aurore Quelennec
    • , Jason J. Gorman
    •  & Darwin R. Reyes

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here the authors provide experimental evidence of extended topological valley-locked states. By splicing together Dirac semimetals and topological insulators, they demonstrate reduced backscattering and enhanced matching of SAW with interdigital transducers proposing this system for topological acoustics devices.

    • Ji-Qian Wang
    • , Zi-Dong Zhang
    •  & Yan-Feng Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Endoskeletal droplets are a class of complex colloids containing a solid internal phase cast within a liquid emulsion droplet. Here, authors show acoustic manipulation of solid disks inside liquid droplets whose orientation can be externally controlled with the frequency.

    • Gazendra Shakya
    • , Tao Yang
    •  & Xiaoyun Ding

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Flexible wave manipulations are crucial in the development of application for topological insulators. By stacking a 2D network of coupled acoustic resonators the authors demonstrate a 3D acoustic topological insulator with arbitrarily controllable dislocation paths.

    • Liping Ye
    • , Chunyin Qiu
    •  & Zhengyou Liu

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