Juoran Geng and Ilari Maasilta from the Nanoscience Center of the University of Jyväskylä in Finland worked on the research. Funded by the Finnish Academy and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme.

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In piezoelectric materials, sound wave vibrations generate an electrical response, and since an electric field can exist in vacuum, it can also carry sounds in an airless vacuum. Only its width must not exceed the length of the sound wave.

This effect is seen not only in the sound frequency range, but also in the ultrasonic and hypersonic ranges. The main thing is that the vacuum gap gets smaller and smaller as the frequencies increase.

In most cases this effect is weak, but we have also found cases where all the energy of the wave bounces out of space with 100 percent efficiency and without any reflections.
– says Professor Ilari Maasilta.

This phenomenon may find application in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) used in modern gyroscopes, accelerometers and other sensors.