A polymer based phononic crystal

A versatile system to construct polymeric phononic crystals by using ultrasound is described. In order to fabricate this material a customised cavity device fitted with a 2 MHz acoustic transducer and an acoustic reflector is employed for standing wave creation in the device chamber. The polymer crystal is formed when the standing waves are created during the polymerisation process. The resulting crystals are reproduced in the shape of the tunable cavity device, and add unique periodic features. Their separation is related to the applied acoustic wave frequency during the fabrication process and their composition was found to be made up to two material phases. To assess the acoustic properties of the polymer crystals their average acoustic velocity is measured relative to monomer solutions of different concentrations. It is demonstrated that one of the signature characteristics of phononic crystal, the slow wave effect, was expressed by the polymer. Furthermore the thickness of a unit cell is analysed from images obtained from an optical microscope. By knowing the thickness the average acoustic velocity is calculated to be 1538 m/s when the monomer/cross-linker concentration is 1.5 M. This numerical calculation closely agrees with the predicted value for this monomer/crosslinker concentration of 1536 m/s. This work provides a methodology for accessing a new type of adaptable phononic crystal based on flexible polymers.