Acoustic Michelson interferometer based on a phononic crystal

A practical and highly sensitive acoustic Michelson interferometer with a small form factor is introduced. It involves two different types of phononic crystals composed of steel rods in water acting as a medium for self-collimated waves and mirrors for the reference and sample beams, as well as a beam splitter formed by modified scatterers arranged diagonally. Finite-element method simulations are employed to demonstrate its operation around 200 kHz. Equifrequency contour analysis reveals self-collimation of ultrasonic waves between 190 and 210 kHz. Introduction of the beam splitter and mirror phononic crystals is not detrimental to self-collimation where outgoing waves from the two interferometer arms interfere such that the output intensity varies in a cosine squared manner. Consequently, maximum sensitivity is achieved when the movable mirror displacement is either zero or half of the interferometer phononic crystal period. On small intervals in these ranges, micrometer-scale displacement resolution is achievable, as the output intensity drops by 0.2% per micrometer. Thus, displacements smaller than a percent of the wavelength are easily resolvable. Nanoscale resolution can be obtained with a scaled down interferometer design. Moreover, application to liquid concentration sensing by considering ethanol–water binary mixture is demonstrated. A percent increase in weight fraction of ethanol up to 10% in the mixture leads to an intensity drop as high as 2%. Thus, significantly higher sensitivities compared to sensing schemes based on resonance frequency shift are attainable. The proposed approach can be adapted for surface acoustic waves in strain measurement or biosensing.