Advanced ultrasonics platform

超声波是一种强大而广泛使用的调查工具，用于工程和医学许多领域的检查和诊断。它之所以受到重视，是因为它具有成像和测量的能力，而且它是非侵入性的，对被检查的结构或人员没有损害。在这个提议中，我们将扩展超声波的使用范围，远远超出其目前的边界，并在两个方向上：首先，我们打算使其在高度复杂的材料中使用，这些材料对超声波测量接近不透明；其次，我们打算将超声波操作的尺度扩展到纳米尺度，这样我们就可以将超声波成像和测量的力量带到纳米机器和纳米材料上，甚至在单个活细胞内。这两个方向息息相关:许多先进材料的我们的目标是解决他们的整体宏观性质源自其结构在小范围内-到纳米尺度上的许多纳米测量系统我们希望研究需要在这个规模更大的上下文中结构——例如,它可能有利于研究活细胞内部环境的同时这是一个更大的一部分生活在体内器官。传统的超声波技术在复杂材料和纳米尺度上都失败了。复杂材料返回的信号在获得的数据和材料的状态之间缺乏任何直接关系，这使得从实验观察中推断样品的状态变得困难。在纳米尺度上，一系列基本但基本的问题意味着通常的超声波测量方法无法使用。这些问题的范围从高频超声波的基本和大量衰减，到如何将导线连接到纳米尺寸的换能器的简单问题。我们将使用先进的理论和建模来设计测量系统，从这些复杂的材料中提取数据，并将其转化为与样品状态直接相关的信息。同时，我们将采用创新的无线超声换能器，以高速激光为动力，产生多GHz频率的超声波，在纳米尺度上探测样品。

Ultrasonics is a powerful and widely used investigative tool which is used for examination and diagnosis across many areas of engineering and in medicine. It is valued because of its power to image and measure, and because it is non-invasive, and non-damaging to the structures, or people, under examination. In this proposal we will extend the use of ultrasonics far beyond its current boundaries, and in two directions: firstly we intend to enable its use in highly complex materials which are close to opaque to ultrasonic measurements, and secondly, to extend the scale at which ultrasonics operates downwards to the nanoscale so that we can bring the power of ultrasonic imaging and measurement to bear on nanomachines and nanomaterials and even inside single living cells. These two directions are strongly linked: many of the advanced materials we aim to tackle derive their overall macroscopic properties from their structure at a tiny scale - right down to the nanoscale - many of the nanoscale systems we wish to study require measurements at this scale within the context of much larger structures - for instance, it may be advantageous to study the internal environment of a living cell whilst it is part of a much larger living organ inside the body.The traditional ultrasonic techniques fail for both complex materials and at the nanoscale. Complex materials return signals that lack any direct relationship between the data acquired and the state of the material, and this makes it difficult to infer the state of the sample from the experimental observations. At the nanoscale a catalogue of basic but fundamental problems mean that the usual ways of performing ultrasonic measurements cannot be used. These range from the fundamental, and massive attenuation of very high frequency ultrasound, to the simple problem of how to attach a wire to a nanometre sized transducer.We will use advanced theory and modelling to design measurement systems to extract data from these complex materials and turn it into information directly related to the state of the sample. At the same time we will use innovative wireless ultrasonic transducers powered by high speed lasers to generate ultrasound at multiple GHz frequencies to probe the samples at the nanoscale.