Ultra-Thin Wood-Based Acoustic Diaphragms Fabricated via an Environmentally Friendly Strategy

Abstract

An acoustic diaphragm is a crucial component that regulates sound quality in earphones and loudspeakers. Natural wood with inherent good acoustic resonance and vibration spectrum is widely used in sound devices. However, using natural wood to produce an acoustic diaphragm is still a big challenge because making ultra-thin wood is hard and it warps easily. Therefore, this study introduces a new method for preparing ultra-thin wood acoustic diaphragms less than 10 μm in thickness, relying on delignification, sulfonation, and densifying techniques. The innovative sulfonation process increased the intermolecular hydrogen bond force, which significantly improved the tensile strength and Young’s modulus of the wood diaphragm, up to 195 MPa and 27.1 GPa, respectively. Compared with the commonly used diaphragms in the market, this wood diaphragm exhibits an excellent specific dynamic elastic modulus up to 95.1 GPa/g cm3, indicating better acoustic properties. Also, the resonance frequency was up to 1240 Hz, 4.5 times higher than the titanium diaphragm among high-end products. Besides, the drying shrinkage rate of the ultra-thin wood diaphragm is only 1.2%, indicating excellent dimensional stability. This high-quality wood acoustic diaphragm has a very high application prospect and outstanding attributes for promoting the development of acoustic devices. Moreover, the reaction reagent can be recycled after preparation, and the selected reagents are green and environmentally friendly.