Collimation and enhancement of elastic transverse waves in two-dimensional solid phononic crystals

In this Letter, we numerically investigate the propagation characteristics of elastic transverse waves emitted by line sources embedded inside two-dimensional (2D) solid phononic crystals (PCs). The results show that collimation and enhancement of elastic transverse waves can be achieved at the band edge frequencies. We find that the collimation effect originates from the flat equifrequency contours (EFCs) at the band edge of appropriately designed 2D solid PCs. It is shown that, in addition to geometric symmetry, appropriate constituent material combination is essential to obtain flat EFCs at the band edge. A highly directional and enhanced elastic transverse wave source with a half power angular width of only 5.6° and an enhancement factor of 530 is realized simply by utilizing a finite-size 2D solid PC structure.