Electrical tuning for sensitivity enhancement of a piezo-electric ultrasonic transducer: Simulation and fabrication

Abstract

In this study, two simple electrical impedance tuning methods derived from Krimholtz, Leedom, and Matthaei (KLM) modeling were proposed for increasing the sensitivity of a piezo-electric material-based ultrasonic transducer. In the first method, the reactance components of the ultrasonic transducer were removed, and in the other method, the electrical impedance of an ultrasonic transducer was matched to that of the ultrasonic system. To these ends, electrical circuits composed of inductors and capacitors were de-signed and KLM simulations of the two methods were performed. To verify the simulation results, ultrasonic transducers were fabricated and operated under the same conditions as in the simulations, and the experimental results were compared with the simulated results. In conclusion, the electrical tuning method (elimination of the reactance compo-nents) was more effective and the transducer circuit structure was simpler. The experi-mental results showed good agreement with the KLM simulation results.