Tiles CMUT dies with pitch uniformity

A large aperture CMUT transducer array is formed of a plurality of adjacently located tiles of CMUT cells. The adjacent edges of the tiles are formed by an anisotropic etch process, preferably a deep reactive ion etching process which is capable of cutting through the die and its substrate while maintaining vertical edges in close proximity to...

Ultrasound transducer assembly and method for manufacturing an ultrasound transducer assembly

The present invention relates to an ultrasound transducer assembly (10), in particular for intravascular ultrasound systems. The ultrasound transducer assembly comprises at least one silicon substrate element (30) including an ultrasound transducer element (14) for emitting and receiving ultrasound waves and including electrical connectors for...

Miniaturized Optical Data Link Assembly for 360 um Guidewires

We propose a novel concept for a high-speed optical data link in Ø 360 µm cardiovascular interventional imaging guidewires. The concept is based on the recently introduced Flex-to-Rigid (F2R) technology platform. This technology allows for smaller intravascular imaging devices with a more compact form-factor. We extended the existing F2R...

Organ-on-a-Chip: Interfacing with living tissue

“A what on a chip?” is what most people ask with disbelief when they hear for the first time of the new and very exciting research area “Organ on a Chip.” The topic has nothing to do with Science Fiction, but everything with a very surprising encounter between two completely different research fields: Microfabrication and Stem-Cell Biology! The...

Residue-free plasma etching of polyimide coatings for small pitch vias with improved step coverage

The authors have found that patterning polyimide coatings containing organosilane adhesion promoter using pure oxygen plasma resulted in a thin silicon-rich residue layer. They show in this paper that adding small amounts of fluorine-containing gas to the etching gas mixture is necessary in order to achieve residue-free polyimide plasma etching....

A Platform for Manufacturable Stretchable Micro-electrode Arrays

A platform for the batch fabrication of pneumatically actuated Stretchable Micro-Electrode Arrays (SMEAs) by using state-of-the-art micro-fabrication techniques and materials is demonstrated. The proposed fabrication process avoids the problems normally associated with processing of thin film structures on polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), by first...