An Optimization and Comparative Study of Air-Coupled CMUT Cells With Circular and Annular Geometries.

Air-coupled capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers (CMUTs) with annular cell geometry have recently been reported to have a promising transmit sensitivity. This paper reports three optimization schemes, which further improve the transmit sensitivity and also help achieve a reasonable comparison between the novel annular and conventional circular cells. Lumped element models of both cell types with laminate plate structures are presented.

Lumped element modeling of air-coupled capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers with annular cell geometry.

Air-coupled capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers (CMUTs) based on annular cell geometry have recently been reported. Finite element analysis and experimental studies have demonstrated their significant improvement in transmit efficiency compared with the conventional circular-cell CMUTs. Extending the previous work, this paper proposed a lumped element model of annular-cell CMUTs.

Capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers based on annular cell geometry for air-coupled applications.

A novel design of an air-coupled capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) with annular cell geometry (annular CMUT) is proposed. Finite element analysis shows that an annular cell has a ratio of average-to-maximum displacement (RAMD) of 0.52-0.

A row-column addressed micromachined ultrasonic transducer array for surface scanning applications.

Row-column addressed arrays for ultrasonic non-destructive testing (NDT) applications are analyzed and demonstrated in this paper. Simulation and experimental results of a row-column addressed 32 by 32 capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) array are presented. The CMUT array, which was designed for medical imaging applications, has a center frequency of 5.

An FPGA-based ultrasound imaging system using capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers.

We report the design and experimental results of a field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based real-time ultrasound imaging system that uses a 16-element phased-array capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer fabricated using a fusion bonding process. The imaging system consists of the transducer, discrete analog components situated on a custom-made circuit board, the FPGA, and a monitor. The FPGA program consists of five functional blocks: a main counter, transmit and receive beamformer, receive signal pre-processing, envelope detection, and display.

A 32 x 32 element row-column addressed capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer.

This paper presents characterization and initial imaging results of a 32 x 32 element two-dimensional capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer array. The devices are fabricated using a wafer bonding process in which both the insulation layer and the membrane are user-deposited silicon nitride. The transducers use a row-column addressing scheme to simplify the fabrication process and beamformer.