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Phased arrays of airborne ultrasound transducers are widely utilized as a key technology to achieve mid-air convergence of intense ultrasound, which is applied to a variety of systems, such as contactless tactile presentation, acoustic levitation and its application, mid-air-flow acceleration, etc. However, it requires considerably precise phase control with temporally severe synchronization between elements, which leads to difficulty in scaling up the entire system beyond the tabletop size as most of the current application systems. Here, we propose a much simpler and easier scaling-up method of airborne ultrasound convergence, where a binary amplitude mask that serves as a Fresnel Zone Plate (FZP) is placed on the planar in-phase ultrasound sources. We experimentally demonstrate that the FZP-based ultrasound focusing achieved a spatial resolution that is comparable to conventional methods, based on the use of phase-controlled transducers. The ultrasound foci created using FZPs are sufficiently intense for most application scenarios that are currently in practical use. We also determine favorable side effects of our method suppressing grating lobes, which is inevitable with the conventional phase-controlling method. The FZPs and planar ultrasound sources are both readily implemented with inexpensive ingredients and components. The result of our study contributes to upsizing dimensions in which a mid-air convergent ultrasound field is successfully generated. Accordingly, unprecedented application scenarios that target the entire room as the workspace will be possible.
Kitano et al. (Mon,) studied this question.