The Blossoming of Ultrasonic Metatransducers

Key requirements to boost the applicability of ultrasonic systems for in situ, real-time operations are low hardware complexity and low power consumption. These features are not available in present-day systems due to the fact that US inspections are typically achieved through phased arrays featuring a large number of individually controlled piezoelectric transducers and generating huge quantities of data. To minimize the energy and computational requirements, novel devices that feature enhanced functionalities beyond the mere conversion (i.e., metatransducers) can be conceived. This article reviews the potential of recent research breakthroughs in the transducer technology, which allow them to efficiently perform tasks, such as focusing, energy harvesting, beamforming, data communication, or mode filtering, and discusses the challenges for the widespread adoption of these solutions.