Dynamic and Reconfigurable Acoustic Fields Enabled by Morphing Fluidic Holographic Lenses

Abstract

Morphing acoustic metasurfaces offer exciting possibilities for dynamically controlling wavefronts in space and time. This work presents a unified framework for reconfigurable acoustic holography using fluidic holographic lenses, capable of dynamically shaping ultrasound fields through volume-controlled deformation. Two distinct but conceptually integrated implementations are introduced and experimentally validated: i) embedded fluidic lenses, which use 3D-printed holograms immersed in a fluid medium to enable volumetric phase modulation, and ii) aperture-defined fluidic lenses, which rely solely on membrane deformation over a geometrically shaped container opening to approximate target pressure fields without pre-fabricated holograms. Both approaches exploit fluid-structure interactions to achieve continuous modulation of the acoustic field at the target plane. This programmable and hardware-efficient strategy enables adaptive wavefront control without reliance on complex phased arrays or static rigid structures. The proposed system demonstrates reconfigurable acoustic patterning and establishes a generalizable foundation for dynamic acoustic wave engineering in applications such as biomedical imaging, particle manipulation, ultrasound haptics, and acoustic power transfer.