A Novel 6 MHz Phased Array Piezoelectric Micromachined Ultrasound Transducer (pMUT) with 128 Elements for Medical Imaging

A novel 128 elements pMUT-based phased array ultrasound transducer for medical imaging applications is described in this paper. The active area of the transducer has a dimension of 25.5 mm long by 9.7 mm wide. There are 6270 pMUTs in the transducer, with each pMUT having a membrane diameter of 160 µm and a pitch between each two elements of 200 µm. The transducer has a -6dB bandwidth of 18% with a center frequency of 6 MHz. The transducer benefits from a high transmission and receive sensitivity of 44 kPa/V/element @ 3 cm and 204 mV/MPa, respectively.