Acoustic metamaterials—architected materials that have tailored geometries designed to control the propagation of acoustic or elastic waves through a medium—have been studied extensively through computational and theoretical methods, but physical realizations of these materials to date have been restricted to large sizes and low frequencies.
A new study, which is coauthored by Portela, MIT Mechanical Engineering collaborators Rachel Sun, Jet Lem, and Yun Kai, and Washington DeLima of the Department of Energy, Kansas City National Security Campus, presents a design framework for controlling ultrasound wave propagation in microscopic acoustic metamaterials.