Characterization of Piezoelectric Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducers in Mechanical, Electrical and Acoustic Domains

Abstract

This work presents on a detailed experimental characterization of piezoelectric Micromachined ultrasonic transducers (PMUT) with respect to Mechanical, Electrical and Acoustic domains. Such devices are very promising for biometric fingerprinting, medical imaging, and gesture recognition applications. The conventional ultrasonic transducers are usually big in size and require high voltage for successful operation. Therefore, the recent research work has highlighted the vast benefits of replacing bulk piezoelectric ultrasound transducers by miniaturized transducers due to their compact size and array operation. These PMUT devices act as transmitters when a voltage is applied between top and bottom electrodes causing the piezoelectric layer to bend. Similarly, in receive mode when a pressure wave deflects the membrane of PMUT, a voltage is generated across the electrodes. In this work, more than 200 PMUTs with cavity diameter ranging from 90

Date of Award	Dec 2016
Original language	American English
Supervisor	JAIME Viegas (Supervisor)