Development of ScAlN PMUTs for Medical Applications
Cyril Baby Karuthedath, Abhilash Thanniyil Sebastian, P. Helistö, Teuvo Sillanpää, Anu Kärkkäinen
Abstract
In this paper, the design, fabrication and characterization of PMUTs for medical applications are discussed. Scandium (20% Sc/(Sc <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$+$</tex-math> </inline-formula> Al)) doped AlN is used as the piezoelectric material. The fabrication process for PMUTs with a patterned piezoelectric layer is developed. Single-cell and linear arrays of PMUT are fabricated and electrical, mechanical and acoustic characterization is carried out. The piezo-patterning improved the performance of PMUTs. The fabricated PMUT showed excellent chip-wafer level uniformity and yield. At resonance (5.7 MHz), the ScAlN PMUT array showed transmit sensitivity of 13 kPa/V and receive sensitivity of 1.1 V/MPa. The good transmit-receive properties and the ability to operate without bias voltage make the ScAlN PMUTs best for voltage-limited medical applications. 2023-0131