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Acoustic diode.

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An acoustic rectifier
B. Liang1,2† , X. S. Guo1† , J. Tu1† , D. Zhang1 * and J. C. Cheng1,2 *
The detection of acoustic signals is of relevance for a range
of practical applications, for example in medical diagnostics.
However, whereas rectification of electric current and other
energy forms such as thermal flux has been demonstrated1–6 ,
acoustic rectification has not yet been achieved. Here, on
the basis of the earlier theoretical proposal of an ‘acoustic
diode’7 , we present the first experimental demonstration of
a rectified energy flux of acoustic waves. A one-dimensional
acoustic rectifier is fabricated by coupling a superlattice with
a layer of ultrasound contrast agent microbubble suspension.
A significant rectifying effect is observed within two frequency
bands at locations that agree well with theoretical predictions.
Following optimization of the concentration of the microbubble
suspension, rectifying ratios can be as high as ∼104 . This
realization of an acoustic rectifier should have substantial
practical significance, for example in the focusing of ultrasound
in medical applications.
The invention of electric diodes, which were the first devices to
enable the rectification of current flux, marked the emergence of
modern electronics and eventually led to worldwide revolutions in
many aspects. Motivated by the significant rectifying capabilities
of electric diodes, many contributions have been and continue to
be devoted to investigations of the rectification of other energy
forms1–6 . Rectifying effects have previously been identified both
theoretically and experimentally for thermal flux1–5 and for solitary
waves6 . As compared with electricity, the acoustic wave is an
important form of classical wave that is more ubiquitous in nature
and has a much longer research history. It is therefore apparent
that counterpart devices for rectifying acoustic propagations, if they
could be successfully fabricated, would have deep implications for
acoustic devices, acoustic applications and the field of acoustics
in general. Despite increasing interest in acoustic rectification,
challenges still remain in achieving effective control of acoustic
energy flux in practice. Recently the first theoretical model of an
‘acoustic diode’ (AD), which behaves like its electrical counterpart,
was presented by our group7 . The proposed AD model partially fills
the role by converting sound to a new frequency and blocking any
backwards flow of the original frequency8 . This innovative model,
which consists of a sonic crystal and another medium with strong
acoustic nonlinearity, opens new design possibilities and promises
potential applications in a variety of important situations that
require special manipulations of acoustic waves. Examples of these
include the construction of an acoustic one-way mirror to prevent
an ultrasound source from being disturbed by backtracking waves
or a unidirectional sonic barrier to block the environmental noise in
a single direction; or, of particular interest, to control the acoustic
energy transmission in medical applications of focused ultrasound,
which has increasing significance nowadays8 . However, practical
realization of an acoustic rectifier, which could give designers new
1 Key
Laboratory of Modern Acoustics, MOE, Institute of Acoustics, Department of Physics, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China, 2 State Key
Laboratory of Acoustics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China. † These authors contributed equally to this work.
*e-mail: dzhang@nju.edu.cn; jccheng@nju.edu.cn.
NATURE MATERIALS | VOL 9 | DECEMBER 2010 | www.nature.com/naturematerials
© 2010 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.
LETTERS
PUBLISHED ONLINE: 24 OCTOBER 2010 | DOI: 10.1038/NMAT2881
flexibility in making acoustic sources such as those used in medical
imaging or therapy, has never been achieved.
In this work, we attempted to explore experimentally the
significant rectifying phenomenon in acoustic waves. A one-
dimensional (1D) system consisting of a superlattice coupled with a
layer of ultrasound contrast agent (UCA) microbubble suspension
was fabricated, which might be referred to as an ‘AD prototype’.
This device allowed part of the acoustic energy flux incident from
one particular side to pass, but behaved like an ‘insulator’ as
the wave propagated in the opposite direction. Such a rectifying
phenomenon occurred when the frequency of the incident wave
fell within particular frequency bands. Furthermore, the measured
pressure dependence of the transmitted acoustic energy flux
exhibited a strong similarity to the voltage–ampere relationship
of an electric diode. It is noteworthy that the rectifying efficiency
was affected by the UCA concentration. With an appropriate
UCA concentration, the rectifying ratio of the acoustic energy flux
can reach nearly 104 .
In theory, an effective AD model should include two compo-
nents: a composite with its own band structure, such as a sonic
crystal9 ; and another medium that has particularly strong acoustic
nonlinearity7,8 . The sonic crystal serves as an effective acoustic filter
to yield different transmission properties between the fundamen-
tal wave and the second harmonic wave (SHW). The nonlinear
medium (NLM) is introduced to destroy the system symmetry and
to break the restriction of the reciprocal theorem in linear acoustic
systems. If the acoustic wave comes from the proximal side of the
NLM, it will hit the nonlinear material first, creating a SHW that
passes through the filter. However, any sound coming from the
opposite direction at the fundamental-wave frequency is blocked
before it reaches the NLM (refs 7,8). Therefore, an asymmetric
propagation of acoustic waves can be expected and reasonably
referred to as acoustic rectification.
An effective AD device was constructed here by coupling a
superlattice structure with a NLM layer. As the superlattice belongs
to the class of sonic crystals but has a simple 1D structure, it is
much easier to produce than 2D and 3D sonic crystals, and its
structural parameters can be controlled more precisely. Meanwhile,
the superlattice is complicated enough to yield band structures
for normally incident acoustic waves, which is necessary for the
rectification of acoustic energy flux. On the other hand, UCA
suspensions were used in this study to produce the NLM samples.
As the UCA microbubbles should have a relatively broad size
distribution, it is possible to yield acoustic nonlinearity in a wide
frequency range10 . Furthermore, the NLM made of UCA suspension
exhibits extraordinary ‘physical’ nonlinearity that results from the
inhomogeneous structure, rather than the ‘kinetic’ one related to
the difference between the Lagrangian and the Eulerian descriptions
of particle motion11–14 . As a result, particularly strong acoustic
989
LETTERS
Superlattice
Water NLM Water
UCA microbubble
I II I II I II I II I II I II
suspension
Transducer Transducer
Water Water
Superlattice NLM
Figure 1 | Schematic of the experimental system and the cross-section
configuration of the AD structure. The AD device was formed by coupling
a superlattice with a NLM. The left and right parts of the sample refer to the
superlattice and the NLM, respectively. The superlattice is fabricated by
alternately laminating six water layers (denoted as I) and six glass layers
(denoted as II) in a periodic manner. The grey regions represent the
aluminium tubes containing the superlattice and the NLM. Two broadband
transducers are used for measuring the acoustic transmission, one as a
transmitter and the other as a receiver. The measurements are conducted
within a water tank.
nonlinearity may exist even when the incident wave is relatively
weak. Such a unique property helps to markedly enhance the
sensitivity of practical AD devices.
Figure 1 schematically describes the configuration of the
proposed AD prototype. The superlattice was formed by alternately
laminating two media (denoted as I and II) in a periodic manner.
Media I and II were chosen as water and glass, respectively,
and their thicknesses are defined as dI and dII . In practice,
the superlattice sample was fabricated by inserting six identical
round glass slabs (1.4-mm thickness) with a spatial interval of
1.2 mm in a cylindrical aluminium tube filled with water, which
corresponded to the following parameter setting: dI = 1.2 mm,
dII = 1.4 mm, and the total period number of the superlattice
is 6. The radii of the glass slabs and the tube’s inner radius
were both 50 mm, in which the propagating acoustic waves could
be regarded as plane waves. The UCA microbubbles (SonoVue)
were diluted using phosphate buffered saline, then sealed with
polyethylene films (thin enough to be regarded as transparent
to acoustic waves) in another 30-mm-long aluminium tube,
with an inner radius that was also 50 mm. By coupling the
resulting superlattice and NLM samples, a practical AD device was
eventually constructed. To minimize the nonlinearity effect near
the interface, a layer of water was left between the superlattice
and the NLM samples. In general, the AD’s ‘positive’ and
‘negative’ directions are defined as the propagation directions
of acoustic waves incident from the sides of the NLM and the
superlattice, respectively.
The experiments were conducted in a water tank (60 cm ×
40 cm×40 cm) that should be large enough to neglect the reflection
from its walls. For each measurement, two broadband ultrasonic
transducers were used, one as a transmitter and the other as
a receiver. Two series of studies were carried out to measure
the frequency dependencies of acoustic transmissions for the
superlattice (series 1) and the AD device (series 2). In series 1, owing
to the bandwidth limitations, two pairs of ultrasonic transducers
were used to fully cover the interested frequency range from 0.5
to 2.3 MHz. One pair worked at 1-MHz central frequency and
1.1-MHz bandwidth, and the other pair worked at 2.25-MHz
central frequency and 2.5-MHz bandwidth. In series 2, a 1-MHz
transducer was used as a transmitter, and the receiver worked at
2.25-MHz central frequency. The driving electronics consisted of
990
© 2010 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.
NATURE MATERIALS DOI: 10.1038/NMAT2881
101
1 2 1 2
100
10¬1
Transmission
10¬2
10¬3
10¬4
10¬5
10¬6
0.50 0.75 1.00 1.25 1.50 1.75 2.00 2.25
Frequency (MHz)
Figure 2 | Measured frequency dependence of acoustic transmission for
the superlattice. The green regions denote two theoretically predicted
ERBs (ERB 1 or 2), in which the frequencies of the incident waves fall in the
stop bands of the superlattice and their corresponding doubled frequencies
sit in the pass bands (gold regions).
a waveform generator and a radiofrequency power amplifier. The
waveform generator provided sinusoidal driving pulses, which were
then amplified (with a fixed gain of 50 dB) and used to drive the
transmitter. Unless otherwise stated, the incident acoustic pressure
was kept at 5 kPa, sufficiently small for neglecting the acoustic
nonlinearity of media I and II. The transmitted waves were detected
by the receiver before being digitized by an oscilloscope. The
oscilloscope was triggered synchronously with the driving pulses,
and the detected waveforms were stored in a PC using the GPIB
interface for post-processing. The acquired signals were averaged
for every 16 consecutive pulses to improve the signal-to-noise ratio.
In the experiments, the transmission is defined as T = Et /Ei ,
where Et is the total acoustic energy transmitting through the whole
system, and Ei refers to that emitted from the transmitter, which
is assumed to be approximately of a single frequency. Without
the NLM, only the fundamental wave contributes to Et . In the
presence of the NLM, however, the acoustic nonlinearity is no
longer negligible and Et refers to the total energies of all frequency
components acquired by the receiver. That is, Et primarily consists
of the energies of the fundamental wave and the SHW.
The measured transmission property of the superlattice is
plotted as a function of the driving frequency in Fig. 2. Within
the considered frequency range, there are four pass bands centred
approximately at 0.6, 1.2, 1.8 and 2.1 MHz, respectively, consistent
with the numerical results predicted using a transfer-matrix method
(see Supplementary Fig. S2). It should be mentioned here that,
as a significant difference between an AD and its counterparts
(for example, an electric diode or a thermal diode), acoustic
rectification can be achieved only when the fundamental-wave
frequency falls in the stop bands of the superlattice while the
SHW sits in the pass bands, and the corresponding incident
wave frequencies satisfying the above condition are defined as the
effective rectifying bands (ERBs). In the present study, considering
the dispersion characteristics of the superlattice5 , two ERBs were
analytically predicted to be located at (850 KHz, 930 KHz) and
(1 MHz, 1.09 MHz). The green regions marked in Fig. 2 represent
the predicted ERBs, and the yellow regions show the corresponding
SHW frequency bands. It could therefore be expected that the
acoustic rectification should occur within these two ERBs where the
fundamental wave will evanesce but the SHW can pass.
Figure 3 illustrates the frequency dependencies of the acoustic
transmissions for AD devices formed with three different NLM
samples, which were produced using SonoVue microbubble
suspensions with different volume concentrations of ∼0.025%,
NATURE MATERIALS | VOL 9 | DECEMBER 2010 | www.nature.com/naturematerials
NATURE MATERIALS DOI: 10.1038/NMAT2881 LETTERS
a 100 105

10¬1 104

10¬2 103

Rectifying ratio
10¬3
Transmission

102
10¬4
101
10¬5
100
10¬6
10¬1
10¬7

10¬8 10¬2
0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3
Frequency (MHz) Frequency (MHz)

b 100 Figure 4 | Comparison of the rectifying ratios for the AD models formed
with three different NLM samples. Results for NLM samples produced
10¬1 using SonoVue microbubble suspensions with volume concentrations of
10¬2
∼0.025% (blue line), 0.05% (red line) or 0.1% (black line), respectively,
corresponding to the three cases in Fig. 3.
10¬3
Transmission

the water and the adjacent NLM was kept at a low level, which could
10¬4
improve the acoustic rectification efficiency.
10¬5 The origin of acoustic rectification is briefly addressed here. For
an acoustic wave that propagates along the AD’s negative direction,
10¬6 the acoustic energy penetrating into the NLM is determined by
10¬7
the transmission property of the superlattice. However, when the
propagation direction is reversed, the acoustic wave hits the NLM
10¬8 first and the acoustic energy is therefore partially transferred from
0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3
Frequency (MHz) the fundamental wave to the SHW. Within the ERBs, the generated
SHW can penetrate the superlattice while the original fundamental
c 100 wave evanesces; therefore, only part of the incident energy flux
would transmit through. As for the efficiency of rectification, it
10¬1
is highly determined by the generated SHW amplitude, which
10¬2 is dependent on the UCA concentration. Figure 3b shows that
higher transmitted acoustic energy can be achieved with an
10¬3
Transmission

appropriate UCA concentration. A possible explanation for this

10¬4
10¬5
10¬6
10¬7
10¬8
0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.1 1.2
Frequency (MHz)
Figure 3 | Comparison of the measured frequency dependence of acoustic
transmissions along two opposite directions for the AD models formed
with three different NLM samples. a–c, Results for NLM samples
produced using SonoVue microbubble suspensions with volume
concentrations of ∼0.025% (a), 0.05% (b) or 0.1% (c). The solid and the
dashed lines refer to transmissions along the positive and the negative
directions, respectively.
0.05%, or 0.1%, respectively. Significant differences between
the acoustic transmissions along two opposite directions can
be observed within the ERBs (green regions) for all of the
measurements. This may be reasonably interpreted as the important
phenomenon of acoustic rectification. Outside the ERBs, the
transmissions along the positive and the negative directions are
almost identical as expected, except for slight discrepancies resulting
from the measurement errors. In fact, relatively low UCA volume
concentrations were adopted for all of the NLM samples so that the
reflection resulting from the acoustic impedance mismatch between
phenomenon lies in the tradeoff between the acoustic nonlinearity
and the attenuation induced by the UCA microbubbles13,14 . The
energy of the SHW could be greatly reduced as a result of
either the weak acoustic nonlinearity caused by an insufficient
UCA concentration or the high attenuation generated by an
excessive UCA concentration.
The quantitative rectifying ratio of the AD device is defined as
1.3 σ = T+ /T− , where T+ and T− are the measured acoustic trans-
missions along the positive and negative directions, respectively.
The frequency dependencies of the rectifying ratio are presented in
Fig. 4 for the three cases mentioned above. At an appropriate UCA
concentration, the highest magnitude of the rectifying ratio is ∼104
for the present AD device with the incident wave driven at a source
frequency of 1.06 MHz.
In Fig. 5, the acoustic pressure dependence of the transmitted
acoustic energy flux is also shown. The results indicate that the
proposed AD device allows more energy to penetrate as the ampli-
tude of the acoustic wave propagating along the positive direction
increases, but keeps insulating as the propagating direction is
reversed. In fact, as the asymmetric acoustic transmission of the sys-
tem results from the difference between the transmission properties
of the fundamental wave and the SHW, the efficiency of the AD
device is therefore determined by the extent to which the system is
converted to a nonlinear one, which depends on both the acoustic
amplitude and the wave propagation direction7 . The acoustic pres-
sure dependence of the transmitted energy flux illustrated in Fig. 5
exhibits a strong similarity to the voltage–ampere relationship of
an electric diode, which indicates that the present structure can be

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© 2010 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.
LETTERS
3,500
3,000
UCA concentrations:
2,500 ∼0.025 V/V%
∼0.05 V/V%
2,000
∼0.1 V/V%
J (A.U.)
1,500
1,000
500
0 large amplitudes. This is particularly meaningful for therapeutic
¬500
¬20 ¬15 ¬10 ¬5 0 5 10 15
p0 (kPa)
Figure 5 | Comparison of the pressure dependence of the transmitted
acoustic energy flux for the AD models formed with three different NLM
samples. Results for NLM samples produced using SonoVue microbubble
suspensions with volume concentrations of ∼0.025% (blue line), 0.05%
(red line) or 0.1% (black line), respectively, corresponding to the three
cases in Figs 3 and 4.
reasonably considered as an effective AD device. As a comparison,
an electric diode may undergo the well-known ‘reverse breakdown’
characterized by the phenomenon that the insulator collapses and
conducts in reverse as the reverse bias exceeds a threshold. However,
an AD device exhibits an extremely high resistance to such a ‘reverse
breakdown’ phenomenon because of the exponential attenuation
of the fundamental wave within the stop bands of the superlattice.
Another point that can be observed in Fig. 5 is that the transmitted
acoustic energy flux along the positive direction might shrink as the
amplitude of the incident wave becomes excessively large, probably
because the UCA microbubbles collapse quickly when undergoing
severe pulsation. It is therefore suggested that NLMs with a higher
stability should be pursued to improve the reliability of acoustic
rectification, which is a challenge for the design and fabrication of
practical AD devices.
With the first experimental realization of an acoustic rectifier,
acoustic waves should no longer be considered to always travel
easily in both directions in a given path, as perceived traditionally.
Although it is well known that, for example, laser reflection can be
conveniently prevented using polarization effects, there exists no
analogous way to build a one-way mirror for acoustic waves that
generally exhibit no polarization. Now, a realistic AD prototype
device is constructed simply by coupling a superlattice with a
NLM layer. The NLM layers are produced with commercial UCA
(SonoVue) suspensions, which are easy to make and have been
proved to be clinically safe. It should be stressed that the significance
of the present work is to experimentally realize an acoustic rectifier
for the first time. As the acoustical properties of UCA (for example,
actual acoustic nonlinearity and dispersion and so on) are very
complicated13,14 and indeed significantly affect the performance of
992
© 2010 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.
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NATURE MATERIALS DOI: 10.1038/NMAT2881
practical AD devices, further efforts should be made to delicately
investigate the influences of NLM’s acoustical properties. Such
efforts would benefit the optimization of the design strategy but are
beyond the scope of the present Letter. Generally, the proposed AD
device offers several advantages, for example, a simple fabrication
procedure, low cost, high extensibility and compatibility with other
instruments. Therefore, it is promising to fabricate effective AD
devices that may be applied to various practical situations where
the acoustic waves need to be specially controlled, for example, the
significant medical application of ultrasound. In particular, the AD
device is extremely robust against backtracking waves with quite
applications of high-intensity focused ultrasound.
20
Received 17 June 2010; accepted 15 September 2010;
published online 24 October 2010
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Acknowledgements
This work was financially supported in part by National Basic Research Program 973 of
China (Grant No. 2011CB707900), the National Science Foundation of China (Grant
Nos. 10804050, 10874086, 10974093, 10704037, 10774072, 11074123 and 10974095), the
Ministry of Education of China under Grant No 20060284035 and No 705017 and the
Research Fund for the Doctoral Program (for new scholar) of Higher Education of
China (20070284070).
Author contributions
B.L., X.S.G. and J.T. carried out the experiments and interpreted the data. J.C.C. and
D.Z. conceived and supervised the study. All of the authors wrote the paper.
Additional information
The authors declare no competing financial interests. Supplementary information
accompanies this paper on www.nature.com/naturematerials. Reprints and permissions
information is available online at http://npg.nature.com/reprintsandpermissions.
Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to J.C.C. or D.Z.
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