Electromechanical Tuning of Piecewise Stiffness and Damping for Long-Range and High-Precision Piezoelectric Ultrasonic Transducers

This paper presents a novel technique for quickly deactivating piezo-electric micromachined ultrasonic transducers (PMUT) in order to increase their potential for acoustic imaging. The proposed PMUT is anchored by four arms and surrounded by two mechanical dampers. The dampers are moved using electrostatic actuators in order to come into contact with the PMUT. By doing so, the resonant frequency of the PMUT can be shifted and the amplitude at the working frequency can be reduced. Measurement results show that this technique can effectively dampen the displacement of the PMUT.