Micromachining techniques in developing high-frequency piezoelectric composite ultrasonic array transducers

Several micromachining techniques for the fabrication of high-frequency piezoelectric composite ultrasonic array transducers are described in this paper. A variety of different techniques are used in patterning the active piezoelectric material, attaching backing material to the transducer, and assembling an electronic interconnection board for transmission and reception from the array. To establish the feasibility of the process flow, a hybrid test ultrasound array transducer consisting of a 2-D array having an 8 × 8 element pattern and a 5-element annular array was designed, fabricated, and assessed. The arrays are designed for a center frequency of ~60 MHz. The 2-D array elements are 105 × 105 μm in size with 5-μm kerfs between elements. The annular array surrounds the square 2-D array and provides the option of transmitting from the annular array and receiving with the 2-D array. Each annular array element has an area of 0.71 mm² with a 16-μm kerf between elements. The active piezoelectric material is (1 - x) Pb(Mg_1/3Nb_2/3)O₃-xPbTiO₃ (PMN-PT)/epoxy 1-3 composite with a PMN-PT pillar lateral dimension of 8 μm and an average gap width of ~4 μm, which was produced by deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) dry etching techniques. A novel electric interconnection strategy for high-density, small-size array elements was proposed. After assembly, the array transducer was tested and characterized. The capacitance, pulse-echo responses, and crosstalk were measured for each array element. The desired center frequency of ~60 MHz was achieved and the -6-dB bandwidth of the received signal was ~50%. At the center frequency, the crosstalk between adjacent 2-D array elements was about -33 dB. The techniques described herein can be used to build larger arrays containing smaller elements.