Capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers (CMUTs) have been developed as an alternative to piezoelectric transducers for ultrasonic imaging in non-destructive testing applications. These CMUTs offer substantial advantages over their piezoelectric counterparts, which include a highly miniaturized system, easy integration with electronic control circuitry, a wider bandwidth, and a higher sensitivity. In this thesis, the design, fabrication and characterization of several single and array CMUT devices are reported. Many sizes of CMUTs, aiming to operate at different resonant frequencies, were fabricated using a PolyMUMPs sacrificial technique.
An analytical and finite element model was used to further understanding of the physical behaviour of the transducer. The basic functionality of the CMUT devices was investigated through capacitance and electrical impedance measurements. These devices showed greater change in the capacitance and impedance data while operating close to their collapse voltages. This higher change in both capacitance and impedance is a result of a larger membrane displacement. The acoustic output power is directly related to the magnitude of the membrane’s displacement. The transducers performance thus can be enhanced by operating close to their collapse voltage and obtained higher sensitivity. The optical characterization, performed on the single devices and on the 1-D arrays, provided a better understanding of the membrane vibration modes and displacement profiles at different resonant frequency modes. Acoustic measurements were performed to demonstrate the transmission capability of the CMUTs. The generated acoustic signals were detected using a commercial detector. These acoustic experiments demonstrated that these CMUTs can potentially be used as ultrasonic transducers alternative to piezoelectric transducers.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:MANITOBA/oai:mspace.lib.umanitoba.ca:1993/23928 |
| Date | 02 September 2014 |
| Creators | Jeba, Dilruba Zaman |
| Contributors | Buchanan, Douglas A. (Electrical and Computer Engineering), Oliver, Derek (Electrical and Computer Engineering) Morrison, Jason (Biosystems Engineering) |
| Source Sets | University of Manitoba Canada |
| Detected Language | English |
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