Electro-mechanical demultiplexer enabled by tunable electric circuits

Abstract

Inspired by the electronic demultiplexer, acoustic/elastic demultiplexers have received much attention in recent years. An acoustic/elastic demultiplexer can split one input wave signal into several output wave signals based on their frequencies. However, little to no work has been reported on the acoustic/elastic demultiplexers by considering the electro-mechanical coupling. In this letter, a multi-channel demultiplexer is proposed based on one-dimensional piezoelectric metamaterial plates connecting with shunting circuits. In particular, a four-channel electro-mechanical demultiplexer consisting of three electrically connected plates is constructed. As an outstanding example, the electro-mechanical wave with a certain frequency could propagate along a desired path. The underlying design principle relies on the indispensable character of the bandgaps of the piezoelectric plates, which are highly tunable by the external LC circuits. A numerical simulation is carried out by the two-dimensional spectral element method to validate the feasibility of the four-channel demultiplexer. Similarly to crystal filters or crystal oscillators, the proposed electro-mechanical demultiplexer could be integrated into some electronic devices, which may provide a wide range of applications in wireless telecommunication and electric signal processing.