Designing Capacitive Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducer (CMUT) Based Sensors for Low Frequency Airborne Applications

We introduce a compact model for the prediction of performance figures of CMUTs prospectively used in airborne applications such as flow meters. The model comprises both a mechanical and an electrical approach resulting in a set of four parameters: resonance frequency, Q-factor, static capacitance and pull-in voltage. A small set of exemplary CMUTs has been intensively characterized by means of LDV and LCR measurements, eventually confirming the precision of the proposed prediction model.