Manipulating the Acoustic Wave by Acoustic Metamaterials

Our research efforts concentrate on focusing photon and sound into sub-wavelength scales. While we emphasize on new insights of material and device design from fundamental approaches, we also actively pursue the applications of our technology in the areas of nanofabrication, energy conversion, communication, and biomedical imaging. Acoustic metamaterials promise new applications for steering and focusing sound waves, and reducing the ultrasound signature of the underwater objects. Our recent effort on acoustic metamaterials has been expanded to tailoring the wavefront and energy flow of elastic waves, with emerging applications such as shock wave propagation and energy dissipation. Our research in nanophotonics focuses on breaking the diffraction limit by optical metamaterials, with potential application in nanoscale imaging and energy conversion. Recently we have begun to investigate optics in a few atom layered materials as potential compact and power efficient integrated optical switches and modulators. Soft Materials We study soft active materials such as stimuli-responsive hydrogels and shape memory polymers. We are interested in developing new micro 3D printing techniques as well as fundamental studies such as mechanics, elastic instabilities, and diffusion kinetics. Various emerging fields including soft robotics, tunable metamaterials, and tissue engineering are explored.