MIT Develops Multimodal Fabric for Sound Filtering

TapTechNews May 29th news, a research team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has successfully developed a multimodal fabric that can efficiently filter sound, and the relevant results were published in the journal Advanced Materials.

The MIT team had earlier created a silk fabric that could act as a microphone and amplify sound, and the latest research based on this result found that this material can also be used for filtering sound.

This specially made silk fabric is mainly composed of piezoelectric fibers. After applying voltage, this material will vibrate. If adjusted properly, it can counteract the incoming sound just like noise-canceling headphones.

Researchers found that by using voltage to make the fabric completely stationary, it can be turned into a sound barrier and reflect the sound back to the sound source like a mirror.

In the tests, the direct suppression mode (similar to noise-canceling headphones) can reduce the volume by 65 decibels. In the stationary mode, the sound transmission is reduced by 75%.

Although the prospects are broad, there is still a lot of work to be done before considering commercial promotion. The team needs to conduct more tests to understand the impact of changes in variables such as the number of fibers, the stitching direction, and the power supply voltage on performance.

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