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Enhancement of Ultrasonic Transducer Bandwidth by Acoustic Impedance Gradient Matching Layer

High-performance broadband ultrasound transducers provide superior imaging quality in biomedical ultrasound imaging. However, a matching design that perfectly transmits the acoustic energy between the active piezoelectric element and the target medium over the operating spectrum is still lacking. In...

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Autores principales: Zhu, Ke, Ma, Jinpeng, Qi, Xudong, Shen, Bingzhong, Liu, Yang, Sun, Enwei, Zhang, Rui
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9610773/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36298374
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s22208025
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author Zhu, Ke
Ma, Jinpeng
Qi, Xudong
Shen, Bingzhong
Liu, Yang
Sun, Enwei
Zhang, Rui
author_facet Zhu, Ke
Ma, Jinpeng
Qi, Xudong
Shen, Bingzhong
Liu, Yang
Sun, Enwei
Zhang, Rui
author_sort Zhu, Ke
collection PubMed
description High-performance broadband ultrasound transducers provide superior imaging quality in biomedical ultrasound imaging. However, a matching design that perfectly transmits the acoustic energy between the active piezoelectric element and the target medium over the operating spectrum is still lacking. In this work, an anisotropic gradient acoustic impedance composite material as the matching layer of an ultrasonic transducer was designed and fabricated; it is a non-uniform material with the continuous decline of acoustic impedance along the direction of ultrasonic propagation in a sub-wavelength range. This material provides a broadband window for ultrasonic propagation in a wide frequency range and achieves almost perfect sound energy transfer efficiency from the piezoelectric material to the target medium. Nano tungsten particles and epoxy resin were selected as filling and basic materials, respectively. Along the direction of ultrasonic propagation, the proportion of tungsten powder was carefully controlled to decrease gradually, following the natural exponential form in a very narrow thickness range. Using this new material as a matching layer with high-performance single crystals, the −6 dB bandwidth of the PMN-PT ultrasonic transducer could reach over 170%, and the insertion loss was only −20.3 dB. The transducer achieved a temporal signal close to a single wavelength, thus there is the potential to dramatically improve the resolution and imaging quality of the biomedical ultrasound imaging system.
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spelling pubmed-96107732022-10-28 Enhancement of Ultrasonic Transducer Bandwidth by Acoustic Impedance Gradient Matching Layer Zhu, Ke Ma, Jinpeng Qi, Xudong Shen, Bingzhong Liu, Yang Sun, Enwei Zhang, Rui Sensors (Basel) Communication High-performance broadband ultrasound transducers provide superior imaging quality in biomedical ultrasound imaging. However, a matching design that perfectly transmits the acoustic energy between the active piezoelectric element and the target medium over the operating spectrum is still lacking. In this work, an anisotropic gradient acoustic impedance composite material as the matching layer of an ultrasonic transducer was designed and fabricated; it is a non-uniform material with the continuous decline of acoustic impedance along the direction of ultrasonic propagation in a sub-wavelength range. This material provides a broadband window for ultrasonic propagation in a wide frequency range and achieves almost perfect sound energy transfer efficiency from the piezoelectric material to the target medium. Nano tungsten particles and epoxy resin were selected as filling and basic materials, respectively. Along the direction of ultrasonic propagation, the proportion of tungsten powder was carefully controlled to decrease gradually, following the natural exponential form in a very narrow thickness range. Using this new material as a matching layer with high-performance single crystals, the −6 dB bandwidth of the PMN-PT ultrasonic transducer could reach over 170%, and the insertion loss was only −20.3 dB. The transducer achieved a temporal signal close to a single wavelength, thus there is the potential to dramatically improve the resolution and imaging quality of the biomedical ultrasound imaging system. MDPI 2022-10-20 /pmc/articles/PMC9610773/ /pubmed/36298374 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s22208025 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Communication
Zhu, Ke
Ma, Jinpeng
Qi, Xudong
Shen, Bingzhong
Liu, Yang
Sun, Enwei
Zhang, Rui
Enhancement of Ultrasonic Transducer Bandwidth by Acoustic Impedance Gradient Matching Layer
title Enhancement of Ultrasonic Transducer Bandwidth by Acoustic Impedance Gradient Matching Layer
title_full Enhancement of Ultrasonic Transducer Bandwidth by Acoustic Impedance Gradient Matching Layer
title_fullStr Enhancement of Ultrasonic Transducer Bandwidth by Acoustic Impedance Gradient Matching Layer
title_full_unstemmed Enhancement of Ultrasonic Transducer Bandwidth by Acoustic Impedance Gradient Matching Layer
title_short Enhancement of Ultrasonic Transducer Bandwidth by Acoustic Impedance Gradient Matching Layer
title_sort enhancement of ultrasonic transducer bandwidth by acoustic impedance gradient matching layer
topic Communication
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9610773/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36298374
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s22208025
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