Broadband acoustic illusion coating based on thin conformal metasurface

Acoustic metasurface with rationally distributed phase manipulating characteristic provides a promising platform to reshape the wavefront of scattering wave. Such acoustic illusion carpet suffers from limitation of narrow bandwidth and relatively large volume to contain the object to be hidden. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate broadband conformal acoustic illusion coatings composed of subwavelength-thick metacells that are designed by two types of modified Helmholtz resonators with 2π reflection phase. By deliberate design of reflection phase distributions of illusion coating, the reflected wavefront can be reshaped between trapezoid and triangles and vice versa. Furthermore, an enlarged illusion is obtained by this methodology. More importantly, the illusion behaviors are verified both numerically and experimentally from 3000 Hz to 4500 Hz, resulting in relatively broad bandwidth up to 40.5%, which is definitely of extreme importance for potential applications. [Display omitted] •Two types of metacells are designed to steer phase from 0 to 2π in a broadband•Illusion coating is proposed for reshaping the scattering fields•The illusion broadband performance up to 40.5% Applied sciences; Photonics