Analytical Modelling of Hexagonal Shaped Capacitive Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducer

Background For ultrasonic signal generation and detection, the Capacitive Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducers (CMUTs), constructed using semiconductor fabrication processes are basically Microelectromechanical Systems based structures. Utilizing the semiconductor technology, the CMUTs can provide improved bandwidth, high transduction efficiency, ease of batch production etc. in contrast to piezoelectric transducers. Objective The CMUTs can be constructed in various possible geometries like square, rectangular, circular, and hexagonal. It has been found that CMUT with circular geometry provides optimum performance but has the disadvantage of area wastage in array construction due to voids in between the devices. Hence, the hexagonal CMUT is modelled and analyzed with circular CMUT. Method The Kirchhoff’s thin plate theory is employed for novel analytical model of hexagonal CMUT. Result The results comparison is found similar with the circular CMUT with 13.42% of more wafer area utilization. Conclusion The proposed analytical model provides a cheaper design tool for the researchers with highly reduced simulation time.