Professor Masahiro Nomura and his colleagues have developed a method for automatically designing phononic crystals using a genetic algorithm. The elastic wave properties to be optimized are determined and fed into the algorithm, which automatically finds the structural parameters that maximize those properties. The algorithm searches a much wider range than a human could imagine to find the optimal shape, allowing for the design of higher-performance phononic crystal structures. In fact, for the purpose of designing anisotropic elastic wave control structures, we optimized a two-dimensional phononic nanostructure and observed high anisotropy in a silicon thin film based on that design. This design method is expected to be applied not only to high-sensitivity sensing and elastic wave devices, but also to quantum science in the future. This paper has been published in the online edition of ACS Nano.
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