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Phononic crystals go hypersonic

Scientists in the US, Germany and Greece have shown that "hypersonic crystals" can be used to control phonons - which are quantized sound waves - at high frequencies. Taras Gorishnyy and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz and the University of Crete say their results could be important for designing novel acousto-optical devices (Phys. Rev. Lett 2005 94 115501).