Physics World October 29, 2018
Researchers in the UK have developed, SoundBender, a device that combines an ultrasound transducer array with an acoustic metamaterial. They created the metamaterial from 16 different 3D-printed bricks on top of a programmable array of 16×16 off-the-shelf loudspeakers, operating at 40 kHz. The metamaterial provides a low modulator pitch to create high resolution – but static – acoustic fields. The transducer array adds dynamic amplitude and phase control of the field. They demonstrated the device by creating hologram, levitating a polystyrene bead above a LEGO baseball figure and passed sound around the flame of a candle (video). The sound field can be stretched and steered and shift the position of the levitated object. The work has applications in medicine and human-computer-interaction…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLEÂ