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A sound investment

Tim Lucas wants to do for sound waves what scientists before him did for electromagnetic waves. The discovery of high-energy electromagnetic waves led to microwave ovens, x-ray machines, and lasers, notes Lucas, president of MacroSonix in Richmond, VA, a company he founded in 1990 to commercialize a technology he invented and dubbed "resonant macrosonic synthesis" (RMS). Lucas compares the potential of RMS to that of the laser, used in a continually expanding array of applications 40 years after its discovery.

"Electromagnetic waves have been commercialized for over 100 years, but the commercial application of sound waves has only scratched the surface," says Lucas, a physicist who asserts that commercial use of RMS technology would uncover breakthroughs, some of which have relevance to the semiconductor industry. Potential RMS applications include noncontaminating pumps for ultrapure gases and process reactors for chemicals. Operating inside a closed cavity called a resonator, RMS can create sound waves with energy densities 1600 times greater than those previously possible in the field of acoustics, according to Lucas. The resonator's shape controls the shape of resonant sound waves in the gases, generating pressures up to 500 psi. These pressures, Lucas contends, make RMS "the first commercially viable, high-power acoustic technology ever developed for gases."

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