Phononic crystals and acoustic metamaterials

Phononic crystals have been proposed about two decades ago and some important characteristics such as acoustic band structure and negative refraction have stimulated fundamental and practical studies in acoustic materials and devices since then. To carefully engineer a phononic crystal in an acoustic “atom” scale, acoustic metamaterials with their inherent deep subwavelength nature have triggered more exciting investigations on negative bulk modulus and/or negative mass density. Acoustic surface evanescent waves have also been recognized to play key roles to reach acoustic subwavelength imaging and enhanced transmission.