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2017
Conference Paper
Titel
CMOS-design of a cascadable front-end ASIC for capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) arrays
Abstract
Ultrasonic transducers are widely used in the application fields of non-destructive testing, sensors, biometrics and medical imaging. Commercially available bulk piezo systems, however, suffer from limitations regarding miniaturization and integration issues. Capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers (CMUT) offer many advantages, since this MEMS-technology is suitable for high-volume and low cost production of miniaturized and low power consuming transducers. The integration of the peripheral front-end electronics onto the chip will dramatically reduce the parasitic effects on the highly sensitive devices and thus enhances the performance of the system. This paper presents a novel, fully configurable transmitter and receiver front-end integrated circuit design and the CMUT elements that both have been developed by Fraunhofer IPMS. The optimized Back-End-Of-Line (BEoL) technology allows a reliable co-integration of the CMUT element on top of the CMOS front-end circuit.
Author(s)