Modern ultrasonic phased-array controllers are electronic systems capable of delaying the transmitted or received signals of multiple transducers. Configurable transmit–receive array systems, capable of electronic steering and shaping of the beam in near real-time, are available commercially, for example, for medical imaging. However, emerging applications, such as ultrasonic haptics, parametric audio, or ultrasonic levitation, require only a small subset of the capabilities provided by the existing controllers. To meet this need, we present Ultraino, a modular, inexpensive, and open platform that provides hardware, software, and example applications specifically aimed at controlling the transmission of narrowband airborne ultrasound. Our system is composed of software, driver boards, and arrays that enable users to quickly and efficiently perform research in various emerging applications. The software can be used to define array geometries, simulate the acoustic field in real time, and control the connected driver boards. The driver board design is based on an Arduino Mega and can control 64 channels with a square wave of up to 17 Vpp and $\pi $ /5 phase resolution. Multiple boards can be chained together to increase the number of channels. The 40-kHz arrays with flat and spherical geometries are demonstrated for parametric audio generation, acoustic levitation, and haptic feedback.

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Ultraino: An Open Phased-Array System for Narrowband Airborne Ultrasound Transmission

This paper describes a correction and an extension in the previously published large signal equivalent circuit model for a circular capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) cell The force model is rederived so that the energy and power is preserved in the equivalent circuit model The model is able to predict the entire behavior of CMUT until the membrane touches the substrate Many intrinsic properties of the CMUT cell, such as the collapse condition, collapse voltage, the voltage–displacement interrelation and the force equilibrium before and after collapse voltage in the presence of external static force, are obtained as a direct consequence of the model The small signal equivalent circuit for any bias condition is obtained from the large signal model The model can be implemented in circuit simulation tools and model predictions are in excellent agreement with finite element method simulations

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An improved lumped element nonlinear circuit model for a circular CMUT cell

High intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) is rapidly gaining clinical acceptance as a technique capable of providing non-invasive heating and ablation for a wide range of applications. Usually requiring only a single session, treatments are often conducted as day case procedures, with the patient either fully conscious, lightly sedated or under light general anesthesia. HIFU scores over other thermal ablation techniques because of the lack of necessity for the transcutaneous insertion of probes into the target tissue. Sources placed either outside the body (for treatment of tumors or abnormalities of the liver, kidney, breast, uterus, pancreas brain and bone), or in the rectum (for treatment of the prostate), provide rapid heating of a target tissue volume, the highly focused nature of the field leaving tissue in the ultrasound propagation path relatively unaffected. Numerous extra-corporeal, transrectal and interstitial devices have been designed to optimize application-specific treatment delivery for the wide-ranging areas of application that are now being explored with HIFU. Their principle of operation is described here, and an overview of their design principles is given.

HIFU Tissue Ablation: Concept and Devices

This paper introduces a simplified fabrication method for vacuum-sealed capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) arrays using anodic bonding. Anodic bonding provides the established advantages of wafer-bondingbased CMUT fabrication processes, including process simplicity, control over plate thickness and properties, high fill factor, and ability to implement large vibrating cells. In addition to these, compared with fusion bonding, anodic bonding can be performed at lower processing temperatures, i.e., 350°C as opposed to 1100°C; surface roughness requirement for anodic bonding is more than 10 times more relaxed, i.e., 5-nm rootmean- square (RMS) roughness as opposed to 0.5 nm for fusion bonding; anodic bonding can be performed on smaller contact area and hence improves the fill factor for CMUTs. Although anodic bonding has been previously used for CMUT fabrication, a CMUT with a vacuum cavity could not have been achieved, mainly because gas is trapped inside the cavities during anodic bonding. In the approach we present in this paper, the vacuum cavity is achieved by opening a channel in the plate structure to evacuate the trapped gas and subsequently sealing this channel by conformal silicon nitride deposition in the vacuum environment. The plate structure of the fabricated CMUT consists of the single-crystal silicon device layer of a silicon-on-insulator wafer and a thin silicon nitride insulation layer. The presented fabrication approach employs only three photolithographic steps and combines the advantages of anodic bonding with the advantages of a patterned metal bottom electrode on an insulating substrate, specifically low parasitic series resistance and low parasitic shunt capacitance. In this paper, the developed fabrication scheme is described in detail, including process recipes. The fabricated transducers are characterized using electrical input impedance measurements in air and hydrophone measurements in immersion. A representative design is used to demonstrate immersion operation in conventional, collapse-snapback, and collapse modes. In collapsemode operation, an output pressure of 1.67 MPa pp is shown at 7 MHz on the surface of the transducer for 60-Vpp, 3-cycle sinusoidal excitation at 30-V dc bias.

A three-mask process for fabricating vacuum-sealed capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers using anodic bonding

Capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers (CMUTs) are usually composed of large arrays of closely packed cells. In this work, we use an equivalent circuit model to analyze CMUT arrays with multiple cells. We study the effects of mutual acoustic interactions through the immersion medium caused by the pressure field generated by each cell acting upon the others. To do this, all the cells in the array are coupled through a radiation impedance matrix at their acoustic terminals. An accurate approximation for the mutual radiation impedance is defined between two circular cells, which can be used in large arrays to reduce computational complexity. Hence, a performance analysis of CMUT arrays can be accurately done with a circuit simulator. By using the proposed model, one can very rapidly obtain the linear frequency and nonlinear transient responses of arrays with an arbitrary number of CMUT cells. We performed several finite element method (FEM) simulations for arrays with small numbers of cells and showed that the results are very similar to those obtained by the equivalent circuit model.

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Equivalent circuit-based analysis of CMUT cell dynamics in arrays

Capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers (CMUTs) have been introduced as a promising technology for ultrasound imaging and therapeutic ultrasound applications which require high transmitted pressures for increased penetration, high signal-to-noise ratio, and fast heating. However, output power limitation of CMUTs compared with piezoelectrics has been a major drawback. In this work, we show that the output pressure of CMUTs can be significantly increased by deep-collapse operation, which utilizes an electrical pulse excitation much higher than the collapse voltage. We extend the analyses made for CMUTs working in the conventional (uncollapsed) region to the collapsed region and experimentally verify the findings. The static deflection profile of a collapsed membrane is calculated by an analytical approach within 0.6% error when compared with static, electromechanical finite element method (FEM) simulations. The electrical and mechanical restoring forces acting on a collapsed membrane are calculated. It is demonstrated that the stored mechanical energy and the electrical energy increase nonlinearly with increasing pulse amplitude if the membrane has a full-coverage top electrode. Utilizing higher restoring and electrical forces in the deep-collapsed region, we measure 3.5 MPa peak-to-peak pressure centered at 6.8 MHz with a 106% fractional bandwidth at the surface of the transducer with a collapse voltage of 35 V, when the pulse amplitude is 160 V. The experimental results are verified using transient FEM simulations.

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Deep-collapse operation of capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers

Capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers (CMUTs) have great potential to compete with piezoelectric transducers in high-power applications. As the output pressures increase, nonlinearity of CMUT must be reconsidered and optimization is required to reduce harmonic distortions. In this paper, we describe a design approach in which uncollapsed CMUT array elements are sized so as to operate at the maximum radiation impedance and have gap heights such that the generated electrostatic force can sustain a plate displacement with full swing at the given drive amplitude. The pro- posed design enables high output pressures and low harmonic distortions at the output. An equivalent circuit model of the array is used that accurately simulates the uncollapsed mode of operation. The model facilities the design of CMUT parameters for high-pressure output, without the intensive need for computationally involved FEM tools. The optimized design requires a relatively thick plate compared with a conventional CMUT plate. Thus, we used a silicon wafer as the CMUT plate. The fabrication process involves an anodic bonding process for bonding the silicon plate with the glass substrate. To eliminate the bias voltage, which may cause charging problems, the CMUT array is driven with large continuous wave signals at half of the resonant frequency. The fabricated arrays are tested in an oil tank by applying a 125-V peak 5-cycle burst sinusoidal signal at 1.44 MHz. The applied voltage is in- creased until the plate is about to touch the bottom electrode to get the maximum peak displacement. The observed pressure is about 1.8 MPa with -28 dBc second harmonic at the surface of the array.

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High-power CMUTs: design and experimental verification

The collapse mode of operation of capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers (CMUTs) was shown to be a very effective way to achieve high output pressures. However, no accurate analytical or equivalent circuit model exists for understanding the mechanics and limits of the collapse mode. In this work, we develop an equivalent nonlinear electrical circuit that can accurately simulate the mechanical behavior of a CMUT with given dimensions and mechanical parameters under any large or small signal electrical excitation, including the collapse mode. The static and dynamic deflections of a plate predicted from the model are compared with finite element simulations. The equivalent circuit model can estimate the static deflection and transient behavior of a CMUT plate to within 5% accuracy. The circuit model is in good agreement with experimental results of pulse excitation applied to fabricated CMUTs. The model is suitable as a powerful design and optimization tool for collapsed and uncollapsed CMUTs.

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An equivalent circuit model for transmitting capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers in collapse mode

A real-time acoustic imaging system is developed as a prototype electronic travel aid (ETA) device. The design is implemented on a field programmable gate array (FPGA). A 6 channel transmit and 4 channel receive digital beamforming algorithm with dynamic focusing is accommodated in a FPGA. The developed system consists of a FPGA, pulser and receiver circuitry and separate transmitter and receiver arrays, which are constructed by using commercially available transducers. The transducer elements have a physical dimension of 1.9 wavelengths and a half-power beamwidth of 43deg at 40.8 kHz center frequency. The transmitter array is formed by aligning the transducers with minimum spacing between the elements, which is 2 wavelengths. Obviously, more than one wavelength inter-element spacing leads to the occurrence of grating lobes in the array response and decreases the Field of View (FOV) below the half-power beamwidth of transducers. To extend the FOV and eliminate the grating lobe, the receiver array is formed with 3 wavelength inter-element spacing. The non-identical element spacing makes the grating lobes of transmitter and receiver array to appear at different places. The described placement strategy and the functionality of the system is tested with several experiments. The results of these experiments prove the grating lobe suppression capability of the applied placement strategy.

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Ultrasonic phased array device for real-time acoustic imaging in air

Capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers (cMUT) technology is a new trend for intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) imaging. Large bandwidth, high sensitivity and compatibility to CMOS processes makes the cMUT a better choice compared to the conventional piezoelectric transducer. To exploit the merits of cMUT technology, an accurately designed front end circuit is required. The circuit functions as an output pulse driver for the generation of the acoustic signal and buffers the return echo. For an accurate evaluation before tape-out, the circuit has to be simulated using the post-layout extracted netlist of the IC with the electrical equivalent circuit that models the transducer pulse-echo behavior. In this paper, we present two different designs of front-end IC for 2D cMUT arrays that can be used for intravascular ultrasound imaging system. To simulate the response of the front-end circuit, we first developed a pulse-echo model for an array element using Mason Equivalent Circuit. The model is then combined with the front-end circuit using Cadence Spectre. The simulation results are verified by comparing them to experimental data obtained from the manufactured front-end IC. The results show that the front-end circuit tested with the equivalent circuit model of the cMUT elements is promising for the optimization of the overall system performance before manufacturing.

F. Y. Yamaner

Papers

Deep-collapse operation of capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers

High-power CMUTs: design and experimental verification

An equivalent circuit model for transmitting capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers in collapse mode

Ultrasonic phased array device for real-time acoustic imaging in air

Front-end IC design for intravascular ultrasound imaging