sound waves tagged posts

Creating 3D Objects with Sound

Creating 3D objects with sound
The use of sound waves to create a pressure field to print particles. Credit: Kai Melde, MPI für medizinische Forschung

Scientists from the Micro, Nano and Molecular Systems Lab at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research and the Institute for Molecular Systems Engineering and Advanced Materials at Heidelberg University have created a new technology to assemble matter in 3D. Their concept uses multiple acoustic holograms to generate pressure fields with which solid particles, gel beads and even biological cells can be printed.

These results pave the way for novel 3D cell culture techniques with applications in biomedical engineering. The results of the study were published in the journal Science Advances.

Additive manufacturing or 3D printing enables the fabrication of comp...

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Sound Waves power New Advances in Drug Delivery and Smart Materials

The patented ‘Respite’ nebuliser uses high-frequency sound waves to precisely deliver drugs to the lungs.
The patented ‘Respite’ nebuliser uses high-frequency sound waves to precisely deliver drugs to the lungs.

Researchers have revealed how high-frequency sound waves can be used to build new materials, make smart nanoparticles and even deliver drugs to the lungs for painless, needle-free vaccinations.

While sound waves have been part of science and medicine for decades — ultrasound was first used for clinical imaging in 1942 and for driving chemical reactions in the 1980s — the technologies have always relied on low frequencies.

Now researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, have shown how high frequency sound waves could revolutionise the field of ultrasound-driven chemistry.

A new review published in Advanced Science reveals the bizarre effects of these sound w...

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Building next Gen Smart Materials with the power of Sound

An acoustically-created MOF, with the microchip that produced the high-frequency sound waves used in the process.
An acoustically-created MOF, with the microchip that produced the high-frequency sound waves used in the process.

Researchers have used sound waves to precisely manipulate atoms and molecules, accelerating the sustainable production of breakthrough smart materials. Metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs, are incredibly versatile and super porous nanomaterials that can be used to store, separate, release or protect almost anything.

Predicted to be the defining material of the 21st century, MOFs are ideal for sensing and trapping substances at minute concentrations, to purify water or air, and can also hold large amounts of energy, for making better batteries and energy storage devices.

Scientists have designed more than 88,000 precisely customised MOFs – with applications ranging fro...

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It’s a One-way Street for Sound Waves in this New Technology

In the image, a flexible membrane (gray square) serves as an acoustic resonator, placed between two mirrors. When laser light is trapped between the mirrors, it passes repeatedly through the membrane. The force exerted by the laser light is used to control the membrane’s vibrations.
Credit: Harris Lab/Yale University

Imagine being able to hear people whispering in the next room, while the raucous party in your own room is inaudible to the whisperers. Yale researchers have found a way to do just that – make sound flow in one direction – within a fundamental technology found in everything from cell phones to gravitational wave detectors.

What’s more, the researchers have used the same idea to control the flow of heat in one direction...

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