Abstract
The advantages of the capacitive micromachined ultrasound transducer (CMUT) technology have provided revolutionary advances in ultrasound imaging. Extensive research on CMUT devices for high-frequency medical imaging applications has been conducted because of strong demands and fabrication realization by using standard silicon IC fabrication technology. However, CMUT devices for low-frequency underwater imaging applications have been rarely researched because it is difficult to fabricate thick membrane structures through depositing processes using standard IC fabrication technology due to stress-related problems. To address this shortcoming, in this paper, a CMUT device with a 2.83-μm thick silicon membrane is proposed and fabricated. The CMUT device is fabricated using silicon fusion wafer-bonding technology. A 5-μm thick Parylene-C is conformally deposited on the device for immersion measurement. The results show that the fabricated CMUT can transmit an ultrasound wave, receive an ultrasound wave, and have pulse-echo measurement capability. The ability of the device to emit and receive ultrasonic waves increases with the bias voltage but does not depend on the voltage polarity. The results demonstrate the viability of the fabricated CMUT in low-frequency applications from the perspectives of the device structure, fabrication, and characterization. This study presents the potential of the CMUT for underwater ultrasound imaging applications.
Highlights
Accepted: 3 May 2021Ultrasound imaging technology has a wide range of applications, including medical diagnostics, underwater exploration, and nondestructive evaluation of materials
The capacitance-voltage (CV) characteristics of the capacitive micromachined ultrasound transducer (CMUT) device directly illustrate the quantitative relationship between the structure deformation and bias voltage
This paper studies the potential of CMUT devices for underwater ultrasound imaging applications and demonstrates the viability of the proposed CMUT device from the perspectives of the device structure, fabrication, and characterization
Summary
Ultrasound imaging technology has a wide range of applications, including medical diagnostics, underwater exploration, and nondestructive evaluation of materials. Ultrasound imaging is based on the scattering of ultrasound energy by material interfaces with different properties through interactions governed by acoustic physics. Ultrasound transducers are used to transmit and receive acoustic energy. Since the first demonstration of a capacitive micromachined ultrasound transducer (CMUT) in the early 1990s [1,2,3], the CMUT has become a promising candidate for three-dimensional (3D) ultrasound imaging systems [4,5,6]. The most attractive advantages of CMUTs over traditional piezoelectric ultrasonic transducers are a wide bandwidth in immersion and an easy realization of twodimensional (2D) high-density arrays for real-time ultrasonic volumetric imaging [4,7,8,9,10,11,12].
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