Fabrication of annular capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer array for real-time 3-D volumetric ultrasound imaging.

Abstract

Ultrasonography is one of the commonly used diagnostic techniques due to its feasibility of imaging various organs and blood vessels inside the human body with a faster and cheaper way than magnetic resonance techniques and computed tomography techniques. Capacitive micromachined ultrasonic device has the advantage of having a wide bandwidth and a small difference in acoustic impedance compared to piezoelectric devices used in conventional ultrasound diagnostic techniques, and thus are in the spotlight as a material to replace piezoelectric devices. In this dissertation, the fabrication process, electrical characteristic evaluation, sound pressure characteristic evaluation, and imaging characteristics of an annular capacitive type device manufactured by a micro fabricating method will be evaluated to eventually lower the systemic load in 3 dimensional ultrasonography.