In this paper, a microscale high-frequency ultrasonic transducer was prepared by combining traditional planar ultrasonic phased-array technology and micro processing technology. The piezoelectric ceramic material PZT was used as the functional material of the transducer. The number of the arrays was 72, the width of each array was 50 μm, the pitch of each array was 70 μm, and the length of each array was 3 mm. The PZT chip was finely ground to a thickness of 130 μm and could reach a frequency of 10 MHz. The experimental platform of micron-scale precision was set up for a beam-forming lateral sound field test and imaging experiment to validate the theoretical analysis. The echo imaging test showed that a mold with a feature size of about 400 μm could be imaged well.
This paper proposes a layer-by-layer acoustic travel time approximation method based on ray theory for total focusing method (TFM) imaging in carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) laminates. The method considers the anisotropy in every monolayer and heterogeneity of CFRP, which approximates the path of propagation as straight in the whole material. The application of this method to TFM imaging is called TravelTimeAppro-TFM. In comparison to isotropic-TFM and Dijkstra-TFM, the experimental results indicated that TravelTimeAppro-TFM outperforms isotropic-TFM in terms of imaging amplitude gain with a maximum gain of 4.67 dB. On the other hand, this approach reduces the computational work compared to Dijkstra-TFM. The proposed method demonstrates significant improvements in both focusing performance and the speed of calculation. This paper also investigates the effective angular range of the layer-by-layer acoustic travel time approximation method through experimental and finite element simulation analysis.
Transcranial focused ultrasound (TcFUS) neuromodulation is hindered by skull-induced acoustic limitations. To enable synergistic multi-region brain stimulation, we designed non-coaxial multi-focal composite Fresnel acoustic lenses, including an overlapping Fresnel lens (OFL) and an alternating-segmented Fresnel lens (ASFL). These lenses convert planar ultrasound into multiple foci. Based on Fresnel theory, acoustic fields were analyzed via simulations and experiments, validating the generation of four non-coaxial foci (10/30 mm focal lengths) from a 1 MHz planar wave using both OFL and ASFL. The influence of lens parameters on focal pressure distribution was investigated, and morphology was quantified using a linear least-squares method. Significant differences in focal morphology and intensity between OFL and ASFL provide crucial guidance for optimizing multi-target TcFUS strategies.