Simultaneous realization of large sound insulation and efficient energy harvesting with acoustic metamaterial

Acoustic metamaterials, capable of both sound insulation and energy harvesting, composed of Helmholtz resonators and built-in decorated membranes are proposed. It is theoretically and experimentally proved that the proposed metamaterial can obtain two sound insulation bands where the sound energy is also efficiently harvested at the same frequency simultaneously. The peak of the output power can reach up to 244 nW when the incident sound pressure is 1 Pa, which is about 14 times larger than structures composed of single membrane reported before with the same input. Moreover, considerable energy harvesting with average output power of about 20 nW can be achieved within wider frequency ranges (with bandwidth up to 90 Hz) by choosing proper parameters. Additionally, the hybrid resonance mechanism of the proposed metamaterials is explained well with an equivalent theoretical model. These novel properties of the proposed metamaterial can be applied in many potential applications in noise control and energy harvesting.