Interaction of high-intensity focused ultrasound with polymers at the atomistic scale

Experiments show that high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) is a promising stimulus with multiple superior and unique capabilities to induce localized heating and achieve temporal and spatial thermal effects in the polymers, noninvasively. When polymers are subjected to HIFU, they heat up differently compared to the case they are subjected to heat sources directly; however, the origins of this difference are still entirely unknown. We hypothesize that the difference in the macroscale response of polymers subjected to HIFU strongly depends on the polymer chains, composition, and structure, i.e. being crystalline or amorphous. In this work, this hypothesis is investigated by molecular dynamics studies at the atomistic level and verified by experiments at the macroscopic scale. The results show that the viscoelasticity, measured by stress-strain phase lag, the reptation motion of the chains, and the vibration-induced local mobility quantified by the root mean square fluctuation contribute to the observed difference in the HIFU-induced thermal effects. This unravels the unknown mechanisms behind stimulating the polymers by HIFU, and paves the way in front of using this method in future applications.