Flat acoustics with soft gradient-index metasurfaces

Recently, metasurfaces have been proven to be effective and compact devices for the design of arbitrary wavefronts. Metasurfaces are planar metamaterials with a subwavelength thickness that allows wavefront shaping by introducing in-plane variations, namely, gradients, in the spatial wave response of these flat structures. Here we report a new class of acoustic gradient-index (GRIN) metasurfaces engineered from soft graded-porous silicone rubber with a high acoustic index for broadband ultrasonic three-dimensional wavefront shaping in water. The functionalities of these soft flat lenses are illustrated through various experiments, which demonstrate beam steering and beam focusing, as well as vortex beam generation in free space. These new GRIN metasurfaces may have important applications in various domains using designed ultrasonic fields (biomedical imaging, industrial non-destructive testing, contactless particle manipulation), since their fabrication is very straightforward with common polymer science engineering.