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Lai Research Group @ UT Austin

Nanoscale ElectroMagnetic Laboratory

Research: Topological acoustics

Topological phononic crystals can manipulate elastic waves that propagate in solids without being backscattered, and could be used to develop integrated acousto-electronic systems for classical and quantum information processing. In these works, we study the physics of acoustic topological metamaterials and explore their applications in the configuration of electronic devices.




Zhang et al. Nature Electronics 5, 157 (2022)

(Left) Simulated bands of the phononic crystal, showing the valley Hall edge band running across the bulk gap. (Upper right) TMIM images of the topological valley Hall edge state at three frequencies and bulk states at 1.010 GHz. (Lower right) Corresponding reciprocal space maps at three frequencies. The dashed hexagons represent the honeycomb lattice. The high-intensity lines (orange arrows) are associated with the valley Hall edge state.



Lee et al. Device (2024)

Optical image of the freestanding AlN device overlaid with the TMIM image across the NPN-like phononic crystal sample.



This research is funded by the NSF Award ECCS-2221822 and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Grant GBMF12238.