This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant will enable new generations of large-scale synthetic materials with embedded active elements (i.e., active metamaterials) which will provide unparalleled control over the propagation of sound. This research has the potential to advance key sectors in healthcare, automotive, and aerospace industries. For example, the sought materials will enable noise mitigation through sound guiding that will surpass the performance of acoustic absorption, which will lead to quieter living spaces. Similarly, these materials will enable aberration-free reconfigurable acoustic lenses for improved medical ultrasound diagnostic and treatment methods. Recent studies suggest that active metamaterials may be the feasible way to obtain the acoustic properties necessary in these applications; however, fundamental research is required to realize the benefits of active metamaterials. This project will derive the knowledge necessary to create metamaterials with currently unattainable acoustic parameters needed for extreme sound manipulation. The educational objective of this project is to strengthen wave dynamics education and highlight the societal benefits realized by wave engineering through internships for underrepresented students, K-12 outreach, curriculum development, and involvement of undergraduate and graduate students in research and outreach.
This project will systematically explore a comprehensive metamaterial synthesis method that translates desired material properties into spatial distributions of polarized inclusions realized by active unit cells. The method will leverage a model that describes matter in terms of arrays of point-like polarized sources and will help answer fundamental scientific questions in metamaterial research including: 1) Is a desired distribution of acoustic properties realizable and, if so, what structures provide these properties? 2) What is the trade-off between the dynamic performance and stability of metamaterials made of large numbers of cells strongly interacting with each other and with the arbitrary, dynamically changing surrounding environment? 3) How robust is the dynamic performance and stability to perturbations from the ideal metamaterial properties? 4) How accurately can one realize desired acoustic parameters in metamaterials composed of large numbers of active cells? 5) How are large metamaterials efficiently tuned at the unit cell level? This project will provide the PI with the path towards a research and teaching career devoted to exploring fundamental wave engineering principles for improved human habitats and living conditions.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
