An endoscopie imaging system based on a two-dimensional CMUT array: real-time imaging results

Real-time catheter-based ultrasound imaging tools are needed for diagnosis and image-guided procedures. The continued development of these tools is partially limited by the difficulty of fabricating two-dimensional array geometries of piezoelectric transducers. Using capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) technology, transducer arrays with widely varying geometries, high frequencies, and wide bandwidths can be fabricated. A volumetric ultrasound imaging system based on a two-dimensional, 16×l6-element, CMUT array is presented. Transducer arrays with operating frequencies ranging from 3 MHz to 7.5 MHz were fabricated for this system. The transducer array including DC bias pads measures 4 mm by 4.7 mm. The transducer elements are connected to flip-chip bond pads on the array back side with 400-μm long through-wafer interconnects. The array is flip-chip bonded to a custom-designed integrated circuit (IC) that comprises the front-end electronics. Integrating the front-end electronics with the transducer array reduces the effects of cable capacitance on the transducer's performance and provides a compact means of connecting to the transducer elements. The front-end IC provides a 27-V pulser and 10-MHz bandwidth amplifier for each element of the array. An FPGA-based data acquisition system is used for control and data acquisition. Output pressure of 230 kPa was measured for the integrated device. A receive sensitivity of 125 mV/kPa was measured at the output of the amplifier. Amplifier output noise at 5 Mhz is 112 nV/√Hz. Volumetric images of a wire phantom and vessel phantom are presented. Volumetric data for a wire phantom was acquired in real-time at 30 frames per second.Publisher's Versio

Fabrication of vacuum-sealed capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers with through-glass-via interconnects using anodic bonding

WOS: 000397049500023This paper presents a novel fabrication method for vacuum-sealed capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) arrays that are amenable to 3D integration. This paper demonstrates that MEMS structures can be directly built on a glass substrate with preformed through-glass-via (TGV) interconnects. The key feature of this new approach is the combination of copper through-glass interconnects with a vibrating silicon-plate structure suspended over a vacuum-sealed cavity by using anodic bonding. This method simplifies the overall fabrication process for CMUTs with through-wafer interconnects by eliminating the need for an insulating lining for vias or isolation trenches that are often employed for implementing through-wafer interconnects in silicon. Anodic bonding is a low-temperature bonding technique that tolerates high surface roughness. Fabrication of CMUTs on a glass substrate and use of copper-filled vias as interconnects reduce the parasitic interconnect capacitance and resistance, and improve device performance and reliability. A 16x16-element 2D CMUT array has been successfully fabricated. The fabricated device performs as the finite-element and equivalent circuit models predict. A TGV interconnect shows a 2-Omega parasitic resistance and a 20-fF shunt parasitic capacitance for 250-mu m via pitch. A critical achievement presented in this paper is the sealing of the CMUT cavities in vacuum using a PECVD silicon nitride layer. By mechanically isolating the via structure from the active cells, vacuum sealing can be ensured even when hermetic sealing of the via is compromised. Vacuum sealing is confirmed by measuring the deflection of the edge-clamped thin plate of a CMUT cell under atmospheric pressure. The resonance frequency of an 8-cell 2D array element with 78-mu m diameter circular cells and a 1.5-mu m plate thickness is measured as 3.32 MHz at 15-V dc voltage (80% Vpull-in).National Science Foundation, National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI) [ECCS-1542015]; State of North Carolina; National Science Foundation [ECCS-1542015]The authors would like to thank Tim Mobley and John Maki from Triton Microtechnologies for helping with the fabrication of TGV substrates. The device fabrication was performed in part at the NCSU Nanofabrication Facility (NNF), a member of the North Carolina Research Triangle Nanotechnology Network (RTNN), which is supported by the National Science Foundation (Grant ECCS-1542015) as part of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI). The device characterization was performed in part at the Analytical Instrumentation Facility (AIF) at North Carolina State University, which is supported by the State of North Carolina and the National Science Foundation (award number ECCS-1542015). The AIF is a member of the North Carolina Research Triangle Nanotechnology Network (RTNN), a site in the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI)

A three-mask process for fabricating vacuum-sealed capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers using anodic bonding

WOS: 000354455100017PubMed ID: 25965687This paper introduces a simplified fabrication method for vacuum-sealed capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) arrays using anodic bonding. Anodic bonding provides the established advantages of wafer-bonding-based CMUT fabrication processes, including process simplicity, control over plate thickness and properties, high fill factor, and ability to implement large vibrating cells. In addition to these, compared with fusion bonding, anodic bonding can be performed at lower processing temperatures, i.e., 350 degrees C as opposed to 1100 degrees C; surface roughness requirement for anodic bonding is more than 10 times more relaxed, i.e., 5-nm root-mean-square (RMS) roughness as opposed to 0.5 nm for fusion bonding; anodic bonding can be performed on smaller contact area and hence improves the fill factor for CMUTs. Although anodic bonding has been previously used for CMUT fabrication, a CMUT with a vacuum cavity could not have been achieved, mainly because gas is trapped inside the cavities during anodic bonding. In the approach we present in this paper, the vacuum cavity is achieved by opening a channel in the plate structure to evacuate the trapped gas and subsequently sealing this channel by conformal silicon nitride deposition in the vacuum environment. The plate structure of the fabricated CMUT consists of the single-crystal silicon device layer of a silicon-on-insulator wafer and a thin silicon nitride insulation layer. The presented fabrication approach employs only three photolithographic steps and combines the advantages of anodic bonding with the advantages of a patterned metal bottom electrode on an insulating substrate, specifically low parasitic series resistance and low parasitic shunt capacitance. In this paper, the developed fabrication scheme is described in detail, including process recipes. The fabricated transducers are characterized using electrical input impedance measurements in air and hydrophone measurements in immersion. A representative design is used to demonstrate immersion operation in conventional, collapse-snapback, and collapse modes. In collapse-mode operation, an output pressure of 1.67 MPapp is shown at 7 MHz on the surface of the transducer for 60-V-pp, 3-cycle sinusoidal excitation at 30-V dc bias.Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency [D13AP00043]; National Science Foundation [1160483]; National Institutes of Health [HL117740]This work was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency under contract D13AP00043, by the National Science Foundation under grant 1160483, and by the National Institutes of Health under grant HL117740

Fabrication of capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers with through-glass-via interconnects

This paper introduces a novel fabrication method for capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) arrays amenable to 3D integration. The work demonstrates that MEMS structures can be directly built on a through-glass-via (TGV) substrate. The key feature of this new approach is the combination of TGV interconnects with a vibrating silicon-plate structure formed by anodic bonding. This method simplifies the overall fabrication process for CMUTs with through-wafer interconnects by eliminating the need for an insulating lining for vias or isolation trenches. Fabrication of CMUTs on a glass substrate and use of copper-filled vias as interconnects can help reduce the parasitic interconnect capacitance and resistance, improving device performance and reliability. This work is especially important for fabricating 2D CMUT arrays and integrating them closely with supporting electronic circuits

Photons Plus Ultrasound: Imaging and Sensing 2017, International Society for Optics and Photonics

Photoacoustic imaging (PAI) can be used to monitor lesion formation during high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) therapy because HIFU changes the optical absorption spectrum (OAS) of the tissue. However, in traditional PAI, the change could be too subtle to be observed either because the OAS does not change very significantly at the imaging wavelength or due to low signal-to-noise ratio in general. We propose a machine-learning-based method for lesion monitoring with multi-wavelength PAI (MWPAI), where PAI is repeated at a sequence of wavelengths and a stack of multi-wavelength photoacoustic (MWPA) images is acquired. Each pixel is represented by a vector and each element in the vector reflects the optical absorption at the corresponding wavelength. Based on the MWPA images, a classifier is trained to classify pixels into two categories: ablated and non-ablated. In our experiment, we create a lesion on a block of bovine tissue with a HIFU transducer, followed by MWPAI in the 690 nm to 950 nm wavelength range, with a step size of 5 nm. In the MWPA images, some of the ablated and non-ablated pixels are cropped and fed to a neural network (NN) as training examples. The NN is then applied to several groups of MWPA images and the results show that the lesions can be identified clearly. To apply MWPAI in/near real-time, sequential feature selection is performed and the number of wavelengths is decreased from 53 to 5 while retaining adequate performance. With a fast-switching tunable laser, the method can be implemented in/near real-time

A MEMS T/R switch embedded in CMUT structure for ultrasound imaging frontends

This paper describes a novel MEMS transmit/ receive (T/R) switch that could be embedded in the general structure of a capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT). A MEMS switch and a CMUT element were fabricated side by side using an anodic-bonding-based fabrication process. The plates of the CMUT and the membrane-type switch were formed at the same step by anodic bonding. A single switch was tested in air for preliminary characterization. Vacuum-sealing of the switch cell was confirmed by an atmospheric deflection measurement. The switch was then biased at 59-V DC voltage and turned on and off by applying a 1-kHz, 5-Vpp square wave to the control terminal while a 1-MHz, 300-mVpp sinusoidal signal was applied at the RF input. The signal measured at the RF output demonstrates the basic switching behavior with a switch series resistance of 124 ?. This work is important for the ultrasound imaging system efficiency and could significantly ease the high-voltage requirements of frontend circuits.National Institutes of Health: EB02101

Volumetric imaging using fan-beam scanning with reduced redundancy 2D arrays

Phased array processing with a fully populated 2D array produces the best image quality but requires excessive number of active parallel front-end channels. Here we explore four array designs with reduced redundancy in spatial frequency contents. To minimize the number of firings we employ fan-beam processing, where ID arrays are used to insonify 2D planar slices of the volume at successive firing events; echo signals are collected by the receive array elements. The array designs are compared based on simulated point spread functions, frame rate, motion susceptibility, and signal-to-noise ratio.Dr. Karaman is supported by TUBITAK of Turkey through grant 106M333Publisher's Versio

CMUTs on glass with ITO bottom electrodes for improved transparency

In this work, we fabricated capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers (CMUTs) on a glass substrate with indium tin oxide (ITO) bottom electrodes for improved transparency. A 2-µm vibrating silicon plate was formed by anodic bonding. The fabrication process requires three masks. The fabricated devices show approximately 300% improvement of optical transmission in the visible to NIR wavelength range (400 nm - 1000 nm) compared to the devices with chromium/gold (Cr/Au) bottom electrodes. The measured static surface profile confirmed that the fabricated devices are vacuum-sealed. The electrical input impedance measurement shows the device has a resonant frequency of 4.75 MHz at 30-V DC voltage. The series resistance of the device is ~1 k?, which is mainly due to the ITO bottom electrode connections. Using a full bottom electrode or using parallel connections to the pads could reduce the resistance. The main hurdle for the transparency at shorter wavelength range is the 2-µm silicon plate. The transfer-matrix model shows the transparency could be improved to -80% across the measured spectrum, if silicon is replaced with a more transparent plate material such as ITO or silicon nitride.IEE

2D CMUT array based ultrasonic micromanipulation platform

In this paper, we designed and simulated a multilayer planar resonator with target frequency of 2.5 MHz which is created over a row/column-addressed 2D CMUT array. We have shown through finite element modeling and simulations that a particle can be trapped and manipulated both in lateral and axial directions inside the fluid channel by activating CMUT elements; And calculated acoustic radiation force acting on a polystyrene particle of 10-µm radius. We fabricated a 32×32-element row/column-addressed 2D CMUT array on a glass substrate using anodic bonding technology. This approach provides a cost effective and easily implementable solution to micro-particle trapping and handling