Capacitive Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducer (CMUT)

• The CMOS-compatible manufacturing process enables a new evolutionary stage in sensor miniaturisation due to the high integration potential with electrical control and evaluation electronics in CMOS technology. 
• The natural acoustic matching to liquid and gaseous media ensures more efficient sound coupling. 
• The extremely low mechanical coupling between individual sensor channels, in conjunction with the increased acoustic bandwidth, makes greater temporal and spatial resolution accessible. 
• The amorphous metals used for the oscillating CMUT plates enable high long-term stability and reproducibility of the sensor elements.
• RoHS compliance ensures long-term usability.

Fraunhofer IPMS has many years of experience in the development of CMUT components and systems. A manufacturing process for CMUTs specially developed at Fraunhofer IPMS is used here, which enables CMUTs to be manufactured in the back-end-of-line (BeoL) process module. This allows the CMUT module to be integrated on standard CMOS processes, a unique selling point of this technology.

Within the clean room of Fraunhofer IPMS, highly integrated CMUTs can be developed on 200 mm wafers and manufactured in pilot series. Coupled with the competences in electronics development and ultrasonic signal processing, Fraunhofer IPMS offers the entire value chain for the research and development of CMUTs. This portfolio includes in particular services in consulting, development, characterisation and prototypical provision of CMUT components, CMUT modules and CMUT systems as well as pilot production.