First measurements on a novel type of optical micro-machined ultrasound transducer (OMUT)
conference paper
Several types of ultrasound sensors have been developed and are used in the field of medical imaging. Conventional transducers are made of piezo-electric material and show good practical performance. However, when the piezo-electric elements need to be small (below 100 μm × 100 μm), these transducers face challenges in fabrication as well as the electrical impedance matching of the elements. As an alternative, we fabricated an optical micro-machined ultrasound transducer (OMUT). This sensor contains an optical micro-ring resonator, which is coupled to a photonic waveguide, and integrated onto an acoustical membrane. The OMUT is build with standard silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology, allowing for easy fabrication. In this paper, we present the first measurement results of the sensor. Our prototype has a -6 dB bandwidth of 19% and a noise equivalent pressure (NEP) of 0.5 Pa. These first acoustical measurements show that this prototype may form the basis of future ultrasound transducers.
TNO Identifier
520179
ISSN
19485719
ISBN
9781479970490
Publisher
IEEE Computer Society
Article nr.
6932179
Source title
2014 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium Proceedings
Collation
4 p.
Pages
2572-2575
Files
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