PZT coated membrane structures for micromachined ultrasonic transducers

Author

Baborowski, J. ; Muralt, P. ; Ledermann, N. ; Petitgrand, S. ; Bosseboeuf, A. ; Setter, N. ; Gaucher, Ph

Author_Institution

Ceramics Lab., Swiss Fed. Inst. of Technol., Lausanne, Switzerland

fYear

2002

fDate

28 May-1 June 2002

Firstpage

483

Lastpage

486

Abstract

Micromachined ultrasonic transducers (MUT) are investigated for phased arrays in high frequency acoustic imaging to overcome resolution and frequency limits of reticulated bulk PZT transducers applied today. In this paper, thin SiO₂/Si membranes coated with (100)-textured Pb(Zr_xTi_1-x)O₃ (PZT) thin films deposited by sol-gel techniques are studied for pMUT applications. The first part of this work is devoted to fabrication processes. Major issues are the quality of the PZT films, the overall low stress of the membranes and the precision of the patterning processes. A second part deals with the characterization of cantilever and membrane structures. The findings are used to optimize a transducer design for medical imaging in the range of 5MHz.

Keywords

biomedical transducers; electric admittance; etching; membranes; microactuators; micromachining; micromechanical resonators; piezoelectric thin films; piezoelectric transducers; ultrasonic transducers; PZT; PZT coated membrane structures; PbZrO3TiO3; Si; admittance curves; cantilever structures; coupling factors; double side polished silicon wafer; fabrication processes; high frequency acoustic imaging; micromachined ultrasonic transducers; patterning processes; phased arrays; piezoelectric MEMS; precision; sol-gel techniques; thin membranes; transducer design; wet etching; Acoustic arrays; Acoustic imaging; Acoustic transducers; Biomembranes; Frequency; Image resolution; Phased arrays; Semiconductor thin films; Ultrasonic transducer arrays; Ultrasonic transducers;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Applications of Ferroelectrics, 2002. ISAF 2002. Proceedings of the 13th IEEE International Symposium on

ISSN

1099-4734

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7414-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ISAF.2002.1195973

Filename

1195973