Piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducer (PMUT) design

Abstract

Aspects include piezoelectric acoustic transducers and systems for acoustic transduction. In some aspects, an acoustic transducer is structured with a silicon substrate having a top surface and a bottom surface, where the top surface has a first portion and an edge along the first portion associated with an acoustic aperture. The transducer has a first silicon oxide layer disposed over the first portion of the top surface of the silicon substrate, a polysilicon layer disposed over the first silicon oxide layer, and a second silicon oxide layer disposed over the polysilicon layer. A cantilevered beam comprising a fixed end, a deflection end, a top surface, and a bottom surface, has a first portion of the bottom surface at the fixed end disposed over the second silicon oxide layer, where a second portion of the bottom surface at the deflection end is formed over the acoustic aperture. In some aspects, transducer elements are reconfigurable between parallel and serial configurations depending on a system operating mode.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.