Scalable Metagrating for Efficient Ultrasonic Focusing

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel metagrating-based acoustic metalens design that achieves efficient ultrasonic focusing by locally controlling diffraction, validated through numerical and experimental results showing a focal spot of 0.364 wavelengths.

Contribution

It presents a new design principle for ultrasonic metalenses using adiabatically varying metagratings optimized by a genetic algorithm, enhancing focusing efficiency.

Findings

Achieves ultrasonic focusing with FWHM = 0.364λ.

Demonstrates effective control of diffraction for wide-angle reflection.

Validates design through numerical simulations and experiments.

Abstract

Acoustic focusing plays a pivotal role in a wide variety of applications ranging from medical science to nondestructive testing. Previous works have shown that acoustic metagratings can overcome the inherent efficiency limitations of gradient metasurfaces in beam steering. In this work, we propose a new design principle for acoustic metalenses, based on metagratings, to achieve efficient ultrasonic focusing. We achieve beam focusing by locally controlling the excitation of a single diffraction order with the use of adiabatically varying metagratings over the lens aperture. A set of metagratings is optimized by a semi-analytical approach using a genetic algorithm, enabling efficient anomalous reflection for a wide range of reflection angles. Numerical results reveal that our metalens can effectively focus impinging ultrasonic waves to a focal point of FWHM = 0.364{\lambda}. The focusing performance of the metalens is demonstrated experimentally, validating our proposed approach.