The requirements of the replacement substrate are that they “need to be sufficiently transparent to light, smooth, and offer good acoustic properties. Additionally, we need to develop a deposition technique compatible with the low melting temperature of the transducer substrates.

The latest effort does just that. It replaces the glass with liquid resin, which let researchers make any shape no matter how complex – which in turn can generate complex acoustic waves of any form as well.

“We demonstrate three 3-D printing techniques for LGFU transducers, and one of them reveals similar, if not a better, performance than a glass substrate,” lead author Weiwei Chan noted in the journal article.

This permits much more precise and complicated manipulations of matter in tasks such as surgery, at a minute level, with greater precision.

A number of problems needed to be overcome to create the new transducer, and a new approach to coating the substrate had to be developed so that polymer and nanotubes could be deposited on the substrate at room temperature, so as not to deform or melt the resin.

The usual way to coat the substrate involves depositing material at high temperature.

In addition to increasing the control of the waves, the method was also relatively cheap – about two dollars each to print.

"It allows you to use acoustics for new applications," Ohl told AIP.

This is because this new transducer approach boosts the accuracy of focus – to hundreds of microns – and that permits heretofore unattainable precision, he stressed, noting that it could make this viable for such delicate procedures as eye surgery.

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