Realization of acoustic tunable logic gate composed of soft materials

Abstract

Acoustic logic gates have emerged as a prominent research focus, but once their structures are designed, the properties of these logic gates become challenging to alter, exhibiting a fixed nature. In response to the aforementioned issue, here we propose acoustic logic gates composed of soft materials that are tunable via external mechanical control. The external tunability of bandgaps in chiral-ligament phononic crystals (PnCs) with both C-tentaclelike (C-T) and S-tentaclelike (S-T) structures is explored. The results reveal that under the same mechanical strain, both structures exhibit an on/off transition effect in their bandgaps, but with distinct characteristics. As an extension, a reconfigurable bidirectional acoustic switching device and an acoustic channel are constructed, enabling tunable applications. Especially, a tunable acoustic logic gate is proposed and experimentally demonstrated, which allows for dynamic alterations of its logical attributes through external stretching. Our findings not only hold applicability in acoustic wave manipulation and noise reduction, but also demonstrate great potential in acoustic designs based on soft and flexible materials.