Double defects-induced elastic wave coupling and energy localization in a phononic crystal

AI-Based Metamaterial Design

The use of metamaterials in various devices has revolutionized applications in optics, healthcare, acoustics, and power systems. Advancements in these fields demand novel or superior metamaterials that can demonstrate targeted control of electromagnetic, mechanical, and thermal properties of matter. Traditional design systems and methods often require manual manipulations which is time-consuming and resource intensive. The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in optimizing metamaterial design can be employed to explore variant disciplines and address bottlenecks in design. AI-based metamaterial design can also enable the development of novel metamaterials by optimizing design parameters that cannot be achieved using traditional methods. The application of AI can be leveraged to accelerate the analysis of vast data sets as well as to better utilize limited data sets via generative models. This review covers the transformative impact of AI and AI-based metamaterial design for optics, acoustics, healthcare, and power systems. The current challenges, emerging fields, future directions, and bottlenecks within each domain are discussed.

L-shape triple defects in a phononic crystal for broadband piezoelectric energy harvesting

This study proposes a phononic crystal (PnC) with triple defects in an L-shape arrangement for broadband piezoelectric energy harvesting (PEH). The incorporation of defects in PnCs has attracted significant attention in PEH fields owing to properties such as energy localization and amplification near the defect. Several studies have been conducted to enhance output electric power of PnC-based PEH systems with single defects. However, it is susceptible to the limitations of narrow bandwidth. Recently, double-defect-incorporated systems have been proposed to widen the PEH bandwidth via defect-band splitting. Nevertheless, the PEH performance rapidly decreases in the frequency range between the split defect bands. The limitations of single- and double-defect-incorporated systems can be resolved by the incorporation of the proposed design concept, called the L-shape triple defects in a PnC. The isolated single defect at the top vertex of the letter 'L' compensates for the limitations of double-defect-incorporated systems, whereas the double defects at the bottom vertices compensate for the limitations of the single-defect-incorporated systems. Hence, the proposed design can effectively confine and harvest elastic-wave energy over broadband frequencies while enhancing the application of single and double defects. The effectiveness of the proposed design concept is numerically validated using the finite element method. In the case of a circular hole-type PnC, it is verified that the PnC with L-shape triple defects broadens the bandwidth, and improves the output voltage and electric power compared with those of single- and double-defect-incorporated systems. This study expands the design space of defect-incorporated PnCs and might shed light on other engineering applications of the frequency detector and elastic wave power transfer.