Fast reconstruction of a bounded ultrasonic beam using acoustically induced piezo-luminescence

We report on the conversion of ultrasound into light by the process of piezo-luminescence in epoxy with embedded BaSi2O2N2:Eu as active component. We exploit this acoustically induced piezo-luminescence to visualize several cross-sectional slices of the radiation field of an ultrasonic piston transducer (f = 3.3 MHz) in both the near-field and the far-field. Simply combining multiple slices then leads to a fast representation of the 3D spatial radiation field. We have confronted the luminescent results with both scanning hydrophone experiments and digital acoustic holography results, and obtained a good correlation between the different approaches. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.