Evaluating the Influence of PMUT Mechanical Support Properties on Power Conversion Efficiency in Ultrasonically Powered Implants

Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducers (MUTs) are being explored as power converters in wirelessly powered biomedical implants. This paper investigates the role of mechanical support properties in piezoelectric MUTs (PMUTs) on their power conversion efficiency. For this purpose, a finite element model (FEM) of a PMUT array was developed and...

A Comparative Study of Si3N4 and Al2O3 as Dielectric Materials for Pre-Charged Collapse-Mode CMUTs

Capacitive Micromachined Ultrasound Transducers (CMUTs) have many advantages compared to other ultrasonic transducer technologies, especially for implantable devices. However, they require a high bias voltage for efficient operation. To eliminate the need for an external bias voltage, a charge storage layer can be embedded in the dielectric....

Phase Distribution Efficiency of cm-Scale Ultrasonically Powered Receivers

In the domain of ultrasonically powered biomedical implants, there is an increasing interest in cm-scale ultrasonic receivers (RX). However, when a single-element transducer is used as the RX transducer, an uneven phase distribution across the RX area can significantly reduce the harvestable power. In this paper, we investigate the impact of...

The long-term reliability of pre-charged CMUTs for the powering of deep implanted devices

Recently, focused ultrasound has been proposed to power deeply implanted medical devices. Almost exclusively, lead zirconate titanate (PZT) transducers are used to convert acoustic energy into electrical energy. Unfortunately, these lead containing devices cannot be hermetically encapsulated since that would block the ultrasound. We propose the...

A microwatt telemetry protocol for targeting deep implants

Implantable medical devices are becoming smaller and more deeply implanted in the human body for various applications (i.e., neurostimulation, drug delivery, bone fracture monitoring). Therefore, an efficient ultrasound power transfer link is needed to charge these devices. However, this is challenging because each ultrasound transducer has...

Pre-charged collapse-mode capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) for broadband ultrasound power transfer

Using ultrasound to power deeply implanted biomedical devices is a promising technique due to its low attenuation in body tissue and its short wavelength that allows precise focusing of the energy. Ultrasound energy harvesting conventionally has been done using lead zirconate titanate (PZT) ultrasound transducers, which uses the piezoelectric...