Bioinspired Metaskin Patterning
In article number 2203109, Long Meng, Hairong Zheng, Xue‐Feng Zhu, and co‐workers report a reconfigurable acoustic meta‐skin with selective superhydrophobic decoration on a metal surface, which can be utilized for generating different structured ultrasounds and have potential applications in biological low‐intensity ultrasound stimulation of living organisms for the study of behavioral response and contactless control.
How to realize acoustic holography via ultradeep‐subwavelength structures is a challenging problem in the past decades, which is thought impossible due to the linear proportional relationship between the structural thickness and acoustic wavelength. In this article, the methodology of ultrathin holography by patterning holes in an acoustic insulation plate with an ultradeep‐subwavelength thickness is introduced. The transmitted sound field can be manipulated arbitrarily to form a desired shape by designing the ultrathin pattern based on the nonlocal wave interaction theory. The physical mechanism of the nonlocal behavior to achieve a sophisticated hologram is revealed due to the interaction among the sound wave components themselves. Furthermore, the experiments are designed to map out the pressure amplitude field of a “sun” pattern in air and water, respectively. The work demonstrates the advantage of nonlocal ultrathin holography in the applications of ultrathin acoustic devices and provides inspiration for the holographic wave manipulation.
Metasurfaces of the subwavelength thicknesses provide a distinctive route for acoustic wave manipulation. Based on the advanced 3D printing, those judiciously designed 2D metamaterials enable intriguing effects such as abnormal reflection, transmission, and absorption. However, acoustic metasurfaces, with strong wave–structure interactions in subwavelength scales, have encountered a big challenge of being acoustically transparent due to the insufficient impedance mismatch underwater. Here, reconfigurable bioinspired metaskin patterning for generating multistructured waterborne ultrasound is proposed. The nanostructured metaskin exhibits the “lotus effect,” with the thickness of only 70 μm (≈1/20 wavelength at 1 MHz) and a tremendous impedance mismatch (≈0.0001 transmission) for ultrasound. By depositing the strippable metaskins via self‐assembly into different patterns, the focusing, the vortex, and the Talbot structured ultrasound beams are implemented, respectively. The multistructured ultrasound has the patterned intensity fields of energy redistribution, where even weak field enhancement at low frequencies can activate the living organisms directly without using microbubbles, which enables low‐threshold and contactless behavior control via the mechanical stimulus.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.