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Hear the molecules

30.01.2019

Ultrasound technologies have been widely used by people for several decades, providing non-destructive control of technological processes, allowing physicians to see the internal organs of a person without the need for surgical intervention, etc. It is quite natural that with an increase in the general level of development of modern technologies, ultrasonic technologies also become more advanced, sensitive and functional. And what researchers from the University of Queensland managed to achieve can be characterized by the phrase "achieving perfection", the ultrasonic device they developed has such a high sensitivity that it is able to "hear" the vibrations of individual air molecules or the movement of individual living cells, including bacteria .

In conventional ultrasonic technology, the transmitter and receiver are made from crystals of piezoelectric materials. These materials are known to vibrate when an electric current is applied to them, creating sound vibrations whose frequency is beyond the sensitivity of the human ear. Ultrasonic waves, passing through air or water, are reflected from harder surfaces and returned to the receiver, where the mechanical vibrations are converted back into an electrical signal. Computing devices can decipher the information contained in the arrival delay time of reflected waves, their shape, phase, and build a fairly clear image based on this information.

Naturally, ultrasonic technologies have their limits, determined by the sensitivity and other parameters of the technique used. So the Queensland researchers had to use an unconventional approach to get the increased sensitivity of their device. And the device, in fact, is a quartz disk, 148 microns in diameter and 1.8 microns thick, placed on top of a semiconductor laser structure. Because sound vibrations affect the disc material at different points in different ways, this results in tiny deformations that are read by the laser and used to build higher quality images.

This new ultrasonic transducer is at least one hundred times more sensitive than any current high precision transducer. It measures the distortion of ultrasonic waves caused by very weak forces, such as gravitational forces pulling down on a single molecule. In other words, this sensor can hear vibrations of individual molecules or "echoes" of processes occurring inside individual living cells.

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