Modulation of optical speaker using biogenic guanine platelets floating in water

Abstract

Microphones are miniature devices for sound detection. Various technologies have been developed to transfer sound properties onto other physical quantities, e.g., electricity. Over the past three decades, many studies have reported on optical sensing of sound. Most of these studies were performed via application of light interference at the edges of optical fibers. Several studies have reported on detection of sounds in the air or objects causing mechanical vibrations based on light interference. This work proposes an optical speaker which is a method to reconstruct and modulate sound from the power spectrum of light that has been reflected by guanine platelets floating in water droplet. The water droplet containing fish guanine platelets was placed on a piezoelectric membrane and acoustic vibration from the membrane propagated inside the droplet. A photomultiplier tube (PMT) then collected the light reflected from the water droplet. Without post-analysis of the measured light intensity, the analog output voltage from the PMT clearly sounded an audio speaker. In addition, it was found that the guanine platelets reflecting light operated as an audio equalizer.