From April 8 to 11, 1986, the first International Academic Symposium on Ultrasound Acoustic Chemistry was held at Warwick University, UK. It marked the birth of Sonochemistry, a new acoustics and chemistry interdisciplinary subject. "A new industrial revolution is just around the corner," the British Times wrote on April 14 of the same year. "It will renew the traditional production technologies of plastics, detergents, pharmaceuticals and agrochemistry. Its advantages are safety (not requiring high temperature and pressure conditions in current chemical production) and low cost. Price (consumes very little energy).... This is a new branch of science called biochemistry.

In 1987, the Royal Society of Chemistry established the Acoustic Chemistry Discipline Organization; in 1988, 20 British companies established the Acoustic Chemistry Club to support the development of acoustical chemistry economically; in the summer of 1990, the European Sonochemical Society was founded in France, and the first European Acoustic Chemistry was carried out at the same time. The second and third European Acoustic Chemistry Conferences were held successively in Italy and Portugal.

At the same time, sonochemistry has also developed in the United States, Japan, Russia, Canada and so on.

In recent years, research work on acoustic chemistry has been widely carried out, and the number of research papers has increased dramatically. In order to adapt to and promote this development situation, Ultrasonics Sonochimistry, a magazine founded by the international acoustical chemistry community, was published in spring 1991. The so-called sonochemistry mainly refers to the use of ultrasound to accelerate chemical reaction and improve the chemical yield of a new interdisciplinary. Acoustic chemical reactions do not come from the direct interaction between acoustic waves and substance molecules, because the commonly used acoustic wave wavelength in liquids is 10 cm-0.015 cm (corresponding frequency is 15 kHz-10 MHz), which is far larger than the molecular scale. Acoustochemical reactions are mainly caused by acoustic cavitation - the formation, oscillation, growth, contraction to runaway of the cavity in liquid, and the physical and chemical changes caused by it. The process of liquid acoustic cavitation is a process of concentrating the energy of sound field and releasing it rapidly. When the cavitation bubble collapses, in a very short time in the very small space around the cavitation bubble, it produces a high temperature of more than 5000K and a high pressure of about 5 x 10 ^ 7Pa with a temperature change rate of up to 10 ^ 9K/s, accompanied by a strong shock wave and/or a jet with a velocity of 400 km/h. This is a chemical reaction that is difficult or impossible to achieve under general conditions. It provides a new and very special physical environment and opens up a new chemical reaction channel. Therefore, some literatures also call sonochemistry as ultrasonic chemistry or high-energy chemistry.