A new detection method for capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers

Capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers (cMUT) have become an alternative to piezoelectric transducers in the past few years. They usually consist of many small membranes all in parallel. In this work we report a new detection method for cMUTs. We arrange the membranes in the form of an artificial transmission line by inserting small inductances between the membranes. The vibrations of the membranes modulate the electrical length of the transmission line, which is proportional to the total capacitance and the frequency of the signal through it. By measuring the electrical length of the artificial line at a RF frequency in the GHz range, the vibrations of the membranes can be detected in a very sensitive manner. For the detector structure we considered a minimum detectable displacement in the order of 10/sup -7/ /spl Aring///spl radic/(Hz) is expected.