The capacitive micro-machined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) has a good acoustic matching with air. In this paper, a 16-element CMUT array for airborne application is designed and fabricated by SOI wafer bonding process. All the CMUT cells have the same geometric parameters with circular and sealed membrane, which vibrate uniformly for good transmission efficiency. And the thin membrane with small mass is proposed to broaden the bandwidth of CMUT. The sensor array operates at a 215.6 kHz resonance frequency with a large -3dB fractional bandwidth of 15.7% and a good consistency. The selection of the driving parameters (i.e. the DC bias voltage and AC excitation signal) has been analyzed comprehensively, which can be used to optimize the driving strategy of the CMUT for better transmission and reception performance. The CMUT array proposed in this paper has been used to demonstrate a two-dimension non-contact air-coupled imaging by through-transmission mode and pitch-catch mode. The images of two kinds of objects have been reconstructed to exhibit the capability of the CMUT array in air-ultrasonic imaging, suggesting broad applications including 3D imaging, gesture recognition, and other human-machine interactions in air.

Capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers (CMUTs) are one of the appealing MEMS devices. Most studies treat CMUTs as rigid plates vibrating in open air, ignoring the mechanical boundary conditions for simplification and resulting in cumulative errors in coupled fields. This paper presents a new analytical model for the pull-in characteristics of the flat circular CMUT cell featuring sealed cavity. Utilizing the plate theory coupled with Boyle’s law, the paper establishes a strong relation between the pressures inside the sealed cavity and the pull-in characteristics for the first time. Not only did we point out that the existence of the pressure inside the sealed cavity cannot be omitted, but we also quantified the direct effect of the pressure ratios on the pull-in phenomenon. The pull-in voltages increase while the pull-in ratios decrease with the pressure ratios of the pressure inside the sealed cavity to the ambient pressure. The proposed calculation process delivers a good approximation of the pull-in voltages and displacements, which are consistent with COMSOL simulation results. Particularly, the percentage error of our calculation process is 6.986% for the worst case. Therefore, our proposed analytical model accurately and efficiently predicts the pull-in characteristics and this paper offers new perspectives and reference value in designing and modeling the CMUTs.

Noncontact ultrasonic detection technology is an effective method to detect damage in time. This paper proposes a noncontact damage detection system based on air-coupled ultrasound and full-field laser vibrometer, which realizes the excitation of relatively single-mode guided waves and the wavefield automatic detection. The system performance is verified through experiments, and the experimental wavenumber is consistent with the theoretical dispersion characteristics of the Lamb wave in the A0 mode. Based on this system, the topography reconstruction algorithms, including the Wavenumber Filtering Algorithm and Spatial Wavenumber Algorithm, were tested and compared with the aluminum alloy plate and the carbon fiber reinforced polymer plate. The results show that, based on the air-coupled ultrasound and full-field laser vibrometer detection system, the Spatial Wavenumber Algorithm has better imaging error and contrast, and the damage edge detection is smoother.

Capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) multilayer membrane plays an important role in the performance metrics including the transmitting efficiency and the receiving sensitivity. However, there are few studies of the multilayer membranes. Some analytical models simplify the multilayer membrane as monolayer, which results in inaccuracies. This paper presents a new analytical model for CMUTs with multilayer membranes, which can rapidly and accurately predict static deflection and response frequency of the multilayer membrane under external pressures. The derivation is based on the Ritz method and Hamilton’s principle. The mathematical relationships between the external pressure, static deflection, and response frequency are obtained. Relevant residual stress compensation method is derived. The model has been verified for three-layer and double-layer CMUT membranes by comparing its results with finite element method (FEM) simulations, experimental data, and other monolayer models that treat CMUTs as monolayer plates/membranes. For three-layer CMUT membranes, the relative errors are ranging from 0.71%–3.51% for the static deflection profiles, and 0.35%–4.96% for the response frequencies, respectively. For the double-layer CMUT membrane, the relative error with residual stress compensation is 4.14% for the central deflection, and −1.17% for the response frequencies, respectively. This proposed analytical model can serve as a reliable reference and an accurate tool for CMUT design and optimization.

Composites play an important role in the development of modern science and technology, but the special anisotropy leads to difficulties in impact localization. To achieve impact localization on composite materials, this paper proposes a time difference matrix matching method with edge accuracy optimization. The method uses the propagation characteristics of Lamb wave in composite materials to solve the direction dependence of wave velocity. To overcome the anisotropy, the time difference feature vector of each element of the composite material is obtained by grid division, and the impact location is found according to the similarity. In addition, edge accuracy optimization is proposed to further improve localization accuracy. Using 49 points in the 800mm×800mm composite area for 147 impact tests, the result shows that the average error can reach 0.532cm, and the variance is 0.217cm ² .

To conduct burst-echo imaging with air-coupled capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers (CMUTs) using the same elements in transmission and reception, this work proposes a dedicated and integrated front-end circuit board design to build an imaging system. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first air-coupled CMUT burst-echo imaging using the same elements in transmission and reception. The reported front-end circuit board, controlled by field programmable gate array (FPGA), consisted of four parts: an on-board pulser, a bias-tee, a T/R switch and an amplifier. Working with our 217 kHz 16-element air-coupled CMUT array under 100 V DC bias, the front-end circuit board and imaging system could achieve 22.94 dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in burst-echo imaging in air, which could represent the surface morphology and the three-dimensional form factor of the target. In addition, the burst-echo imaging range of our air-coupled CMUT imaging system, which could work between 52 and 273 mm, was discussed. This work suggests good potential for ultrasound imaging and gesture recognition applications.