FEA of CMUTs suitable for wide gas pressure range applications

The ability of ultrasound transducers to operate over a wide and varying pressure range is essential in applications such as ultrasonic flow metering (UFM) of flare gas. We propose a new operational mode for capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers (CMUTs), in which the plate is in permanent contact with the bottom of the cavity, even at zero DC bias and 1 atm pressure. Finite element analysis (FEA) software was used to investigate the performance of these CMUTs within the pressure range of 1 to 20 atm. First, we performed a static analysis to determine the plate deflection and, thus, the gap height. Further, from the static analysis, we obtained the static and free capacitances for calculating the coupling efficiency, and a modal analysis identified possible design geometries for frequencies lower than ~ 300 kHz. Our calculations show that conventionally operated CMUTs have huge changes in static operational point at different pressures, while our proposed mode exhibits an acceptable frequency range (73 340 kHz) over 1-20 atm pressure and an improved coupling efficiency at lower dc bias voltages. A donut shape partial electrode further allows us to tune the coupling efficiency, which translates into a better performance, especially at the higher pressure range. FEA shows that our proposed operation mode is a promising solution for flare gas metering applications.