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Airborne Piezoelectric Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducers for Long-Range

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Article in Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems · December 2020

DOI: 10.1109/JMEMS.2020.3037298

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JOURNAL OF MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS
Airborne Piezoelectric Micromachined Ultrasonic
Transducers for Long-Range Detection
Guo-Lun Luo , Student Member, IEEE, Yuri Kusano , and David A. Horsley, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract— This paper presents an airborne piezoelectric micro-
machined ultrasonic transducers (PMUTs) operated at low fre-
quency (40-50 kHz) for long-range detection, where the acoustic
absorption loss in air is relatively low (0.8-1 dB/m). The PMUTs
made with single-crystal Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT) enables
a high piezoelectric coefficient (e31, f ≈ 16- 24 C/m2 ), and a low
dielectric constant (εr ≈ 308), achieving high PMUT transceiver
efficiency. The 2 × 2 PMUT array achieves a very high sound
pressure level (SPL) output of 109.4 dB at 26 cm distance.
Different from conventional PZT PMUTs, this study utilized
single-crystal PZT with a low permittivity to achieve a good
acoustic reception, demonstrating the sensitivity of 2 mV/Pa.
This work reports the PMUT design, modeling, fabrication,
characterization, enabling a long-range detection of 4.8 meters
in a pulse-echo experiment, which was conducted by a pair of
2 × 2 PMUT arrays with the matched resonances. [2020-0270]
Index Terms— PMUT, PZT, MEMS, piezoelectric, transducers,
ultrasound, range detection, airborne.
I. I NTRODUCTION
P IEZOELECTRIC micromachined
transducers (PMUTs) have been well developed
ultrasonic
with the advantages of cost-effective manufacturing process,
lower power consumption, and good acoustic impedance
matching. Air-coupled PMUTs are utilized as ultrasonic Time-
of-Flight (ToF) sensors for range finding [1]–[3] and gesture
recognition [4], [5]. For immersion applications, PMUTs have
been demonstrated as energy-transmission devices [6], [7],
medical imaging [8], and biometric sensors [9]. For other
potential applications where conventional air-coupled
ultrasonic sensors are used, such as automotive parking
assistance, and proximity sensors for robots, PMUTs have yet
to provide sufficient pressure output and receiving sensitivity
to have enough operating distance.
Manuscript received July 15, 2020; revised October 5, 2020; accepted
November 2, 2020. This work was supported by the Berkeley Sensor and
Actuator Center industrial members. Subject Editor E. S. Kim. (Corresponding
author: Guo-Lun Luo.)
Guo-Lun Luo was with the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace
Engineering, University of California, Davis, CA 95616 USA. He is now with
the AiTA BIO Inc., Campbell, CA 95008 USA (e-mail: ray.luo@aitabio.com).
Yuri Kusano was with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engi-
neering, University of California, Davis, CA 95616 USA. She is now with
the Facebook Reality Labs, Redmond, WA 98052 USA (e-mail: yurikusano@
fb.com).
David A. Horsley is with Chirp Microsystems, Berkeley, CA 94710 USA,
and also with the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace, University of
California, Davis, CA 95616 USA (e-mail: dahorsley@ucdavis.edu).
Color versions of one or more figures in this article are available at
https://doi.org/10.1109/JMEMS.2020.3037298.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JMEMS.2020.3037298
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1
Many approaches were reported to improve PMUT’s
pressure output, such as MEMS structure designs, and
piezoelectric material selections. Among structure designs,
the bimorph PMUT doubles the actuation sensitivity of
unimorph PMUTs [10]. PMUTs with modified surface
profile have been proposed to have higher electromechanical
coupling [11], [12]. Furthermore, high fill-factor PMUT
arrays [12]–[14] have larger active areas resulting in higher
pressure output. For piezoelectric material selections, thin-film
PZT, AlN, and ScAlN are well investigated [15], and PMUTs
fabricated by these materials are reported in [3], [16]–[22],
and summarized in Table I.
AlN PMUTs have good receiving sensitivity due to their
low permittivity (ε33 ∼ 10), but their low piezoelectric
coefficients (e31, f ∼ −1) result in low transmit pressure
per volt. The output sound pressure level (SPL) of prior-art
AlN PMUTs is less than 0.5 Pa (88 dB SPL) [2], lower
than conventional bulk piezoelectric transducers. Scandium
AlN (Scx Al1−x N) has higher piezoelectric coefficients than
AlN, but similar dielectric constant. Previously, 36% ScAlN
PMUTs with e31, f ∼ −2.3, ε33 ∼ 12 were published
in [19], [20], resulting in better transmitting performance.
Compared to AlN-family PMUTs, PZT PMUTs offer much
higher transmitting sensitivity (TX), but lower receiving
sensitivity (RX) due to PZT’s high permittivity. The PZT
PMUT in [23] with e31, f ∼ −13.1; ε33 ∼ 854, was
shown to deliver good pressure transmission but low receiving
sensitivity.
In the past two decades, various approaches have been
explored to improve PZT thin-film properties including
substrate selections [24], growth method [23], [25]–[27] and
cooling temperature [28], Zr/ Ti material composition [29].
Most recently, single-crystal PZT thin films have been
demonstrated to achieve high piezoelectric coefficients and low
permittivity. Earlier epitaxial PZT (e31, f ∼ 14; ε33 ∼ 250)
was developed to demonstrate a high-performance PMUT
rangefinder [3]. This rangefinder operated at a relatively high
frequency (160 kHz) in the air, which has the disadvantage
of high acoustic absorption loss around 5-10 dB/m, resulting
in a maximum range of 1- 2 m. In this paper, we demonstrate
an epitaxial PZT PMUT operating at 40-50 kHz in the
air, enabling long-distance detection due to lower acoustic
absorption loss of 0.8- 1 dB/m. Pulse-echo range-finding
experiments were conducted to demonstrate a maximum
operating range of 4.8 m. This study extends the previous
conference paper [1] with the excellent piezoelectric material
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2 JOURNAL OF MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS

Fig. 1. (a) the schematic of the PMUT cross-section. (b) the profile of the
PMUT flexural mode shape. (c) the displacement simulation versus the PZT
layer thickness for finding the optimal value. (Note: a 5-μm silicon layer (t s )
is selected for the simulation).

property (e31, f ∼ −24; ε33 ∼ 308), to implement the high

SPL transmission output. Fig. 2. Modeling the PMUT linear and non-linear behaviors: (a) the
resonance frequency and the displacement per volt versus the PMUT radius;
II. PMUT D ESIGN AND M ODELING (b) the 625μm-radius PMUT displacement versus the driving voltage.

In this work, a circular diaphragm was selected for the

PMUT design. The diaphragm is composed of a PZT layer
as the piezoelectric layer with thickness (t p ), and a silicon
layer as the elastic layer with thickness (ts ). The schematic
cross-section is shown in Fig. 1(a). The PMUT fundamental
resonant frequency without residual stress can be calculated
by
 was optimized by FEM simulation (COMSOL Multiphysics).
0.47t E  /ρm
fo =
r2
where t is the layer total thickness, and average plate modulus
E  = (E p t p + E s ts )/(t p + ts ), E p,s = E p,s /(1 − ν 2 ), E p,s is
the Young’s modulus of the PZT and Si layers (PZT: 57∼80
GPa, Si: 168GPa), ν is Poisson’s ratio (PZT: 0.32, Si: 0.064),
ρm is the average density of the PMUT diaphragm, and r
is the radius of the PMUT diaphragm. Fig. 1(b) shows the
flexural-mode PMUT with the maximum diaphragm displace-
ment at the diaphragm center. The displacement is estimated
by [17]
 
3r 2
dt x = ηVin Q
64π D
= (1/km )ηVin Q
where D = E  t 3 /12 is the flexural rigidity, km is the
mechanical spring constant, Q is the quality-factor, F = ηVin
is the driving force induced by piezoelectric stress, Vin is the
input voltage, and η is the electromechanical transformer ratio
coefficient. This coefficient can be calculated by
η = 4πγ 2 (γ 2 − 1)e31, f z p
where e31, f is the transverse thin-film piezoelectric coefficient,
γ is the top electrode coverage which is optimized to 70% to
maximize η, and z p is the distance from the diaphragm neutral
axis to the middle of the PZT layer. In this study, a 5-μm
silicon layer (ts ) was selected, and the thickness of PZT (t p )
Note that the optimized γ is not optimal for receiving oper-
(1)
ation. Fig. 1(c) shows the optimum PZT thickness is around
2.5 μm thick, resulting in the maximum PMUT displacement.
Due to fabrication considerations, we chose a 2 μm PZT
layer for the fabrication process. With the chosen PZT/Si layer
thicknesses, the PMUT resonances and displacements versus
radius are predicted by Eq. (1) and (2) and shown in Fig. 2.
However, PMUT resonances and displacements are influenced
by mechanical nonlinearity. The diaphragm restoring force
with nonlinear spring-hardening effect is presented by
F = km dm + kt dm3 (4)
where kt is the nonlinear spring constant, and dm is the
(2) nonlinear displacement modified from dt x . As defined in [30],
kt is a function of structure geometry, material rigidity and
Poisson’s ratio as
kt = 24Cv π D/r 2 t 2 (5)
where the coefficient Cv = (896585 + 529610ν −
342831ν 2)/29645 is related to the Poisson’s ratios of the
(3) PMUT materials. For the 40-50 kHz resonance, the PMUT

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LUO et al.: AIRBORNE PIEZOELECTRIC MICROMACHINED ULTRASONIC TRANSDUCERS FOR LONG-RANGE DETECTION 3

TABLE I radiation resistance, resulting in wider bandwidth. For a 2 × 2

C OMPARISON OF PMUT T HIN -F ILM P IEZOELECTRIC L AYER PMUT array, the quadruple PMUT area with the effective
radius of half-aperture of the array brings Q air ∼ 10 with
Z r,m ≈ 201 (μN-s/ m), resulting in 10% fractional bandwidth.
For transmission, the PMUT pressure output in far-field at
a distance l is given by,
R0 Po 2π f dt x Z r,m −αl
Pt x (r ) = ≈ e (10)
l λl
where R0 = Ae f f /λ is the Rayleigh range, and λ is the
acoustic wavelength. The surface pressure is P0 ≈ 2π f d Z r ,
and e−αl is the attenuation term with the coefficient α related
to temperature and humidity [2]. Using Eq. (10), the 2 ×
2.40 kHz PMUT array is predicted to transmit 110 dB-SPL
output at 30 cm with the PMUT displacement is 15 μm.
Conversely, the PMUT receiving sensitivity is predicted by,
 
 Vout 
Sr x =   ∝ ηdr x (11)
Pin  (C o +C p )
where Vout is voltage output sensed by the PMUT, Co is the
device electrical capacitance, C p is the parasitic capacitance,
radius was designed as 625 μm using Eq. (1), and the dr x is the PMUT receiving displacement when the PMUT
linear and non-linear PMUT displacement was calculated by diaphragm is driven by external pressure Pin ,
Eq. (2)-(5) as shown in Fig. 2(b).  
dr x = (1/km ) Pin Ae f f Q (12)
A larger Q-factor brings a higher dynamic displacement, per
Eq. (2), but a narrower fractional bandwidth (F BW ≈ 1/Q) The PMUT receiving sensitivity (RX) can be described by
[12]. For flexural resonators operated in the air, the Q-factor Eq. (3)(11) (12), and e31, f can be derived by,
is determined by summing the energy loss sources,
e31, f = d31 /(s11 + s12 ) (13)
1 1 1 1 1
≈ + + + (6)
Q Q air Q anchor QT E D Q Ot her where s11 and s12 are the coefficients of the piezoelectric
where 1/Q air is the air damping, 1/Q anchor is the anchor loss, layer’s compliance matrix S [17]. To extract material proper-
1/Q T E D is the thermoelastic damping, and 1/Q ot her repre- ties of the PZT film, 2-μm single-crystal-PZT was deposited
sents the other intrinsic loss. The air damping of an air-coupled on a monitor wafer, and PZT/Si piezoelectric cantilevers
PMUT dominates the other terms and the resulting-quality were diced from the monitor wafer. Using the cantilevers,
factor can be estimated by the piezoelectric coefficient d31 = 195 pC/N was measured,
and e31, f was estimated to be around 16- 24 C/m2 by
Q air = L m ωo /Re{Z r,m } (7) Eq. (13) using general PZT compliances, where s11 = 1.17∼
where ωo is the resonant angular frequency, L m is the modal 1.75 (10−11m2 /N) and s12 = −5.6∼ −3.76 (10−12m2 /N),.
f /ε33 εo where εo is
The PMUT figure of merit (FOM) is e31, 2
mass of the PMUT diaphragm (L m ∼ 0.2ρm t), and Z r,m is
the radiation impedance of air. For a circular piston, Z r,m is the permittivity in vacuum, and ε33 is the dielectric constant.
given by In Eq. (11), lower ε33 enables lower device capacitance,
Co = ε33 εo (πr 2 )/t p , resulting in higher RX sensitivity.
J1 (2ka) H1(2ka)
Z r,m = (πa 2 )Z o (1 − +j ) (8)
2ka 2ka
III. FABRICATION P ROCESS
where Z o ≈ 413Rayl, J1 is the first-order Bessel function,
The PMUT fabrication process flow is shown in Fig. 3.
√ function, k = 2π/λ is the wave-
H1 is the first-order Struve
number, and a = r/ 3 is the effective radius, derived First, an SOI wafer with 5 μm P-type Si device layer with
from the effective area which is one-third of the circular <0.01 ohm-cm resistivity, 1 μm buried silicon dioxide (BOX),
diaphragm area (Aef f = πr 2 /3). The real part of Z r,m repre- and 650 μm P-type Si handle layer was selected. Using
sents the dissipative resistance of 12.6 (μN-s/ m) resulting physical vapor deposition (PVD), 50 nm ZrO2 buffer layer,
in Q air ∼ 127 for a 625 μm radius PMUT operating at 160 nm Pt bottom electrode, and 2 μm single-crystal PZT
40 kHz. The estimated fractional bandwidth can be derived piezoelectric layer, were deposited on the silicon device layer
from Eq. (7), of the SOI wafer by Global MEMS Co. Ltd., Taiwan. The
single-crystal PZT film properties include: (1) high e31, f and
Re{Z r,m }
F BW ≈ 1/Q air ∝ (9) low permittivity ε33 ; (2) Zr/ Ti ratio of 58/42; (3) Curie
2πρm t temperature of 600 ◦ C; (4) self-polarization with the rem-
By utilizing a 2×2 PMUT array, the larger active area not only nant polarization of 34.6 μC/cm2 ; (5) the coercive voltage
brings higher transmission pressure output but also higher of 18.3V.

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4 JOURNAL OF MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS

Fig. 4. Cross-section view of PZT PMUT: the suspended diaphragm with

silicon residue and the 3.1μm sidewall undercut from DRIE.

Fig. 3. Fabrication process flow of the PZT PMUT: (a) ZrO2/ Pt/ PZT
deposition on SOI wafers. (b) PZT etching to expose bottom electrodes. (c) Al
lift-off deposition for top electrodes. (d) forming the back-side cavity and
releasing PMUT diaphragms by DRIE.

TABLE II
T HE E TCHING P ROFILE OF THE PMUT C AVITY

Fig. 5. Fabrication results: (a) wafer front-side shows various PMUT designs.
(b) wafer back-side shows etching holes with oxide layer as etching stop.
(c) the 5 × 5 mm2 diced chips. (d) the optical image of the PMUT array
geometry.

To pattern the PZT layer, buffered HF (BOE 10:1) solution

was utilized. The isotropic wet-etching process had an etching 120 μm-thick dicing tape on both sides to protect the released
rate around 2 min/μm, and the 2 μm lateral undercut of diaphragms and prevent debris from entering into the cavities
PZT layer was measured, showing 1:1 etching aspect ratio. during the dicing process, and then the tape was released
Fig. 3(c) presents the lift-off process, forming the 0.5 μm using Isopropyl Alcohol (IPA), and the diced chips are shown
Al top electrode with diameter equal to 70% of the PMUT in Fig. 5(c). The pattern of the 2 × 2.625-μm-radius-PMUT
diameter. A large contact resistance (>100 ohm-cm2) between array is shown in Fig. 5(d).
Al layer and Pt bottom electrode was observed after the
deposition, therefore a low-temperature annealing of 200 ◦ C IV. C HARACTERIZATION AND D ISCUSSION
was applied to lower the contact resistance (<1 ohm-cm2). A. Residual Stress and Etching Undercut
Fig. 3(d) shows the back-side cavity formation using deep
reaction ion etching (DRIE) to release the diaphragm, and the The process variation, including residual stresses and etch-
device wafer was temporarily bonded to a carrier wafer by ing undercuts, significantly affects the PMUT’s resonance
photoresist to protect the thin diaphragms during the DRIE frequency. Considering a uniform residual stress on a PMUT
process, and the BOX layer is the etching stop to protect diaphragm, the stress-free natural frequency from Eq. (1) can
the device layer. Fig. 4 shows the SEM photo of the PMUT be rewritten as

etching profile with 3.1 μm undercut in the 625-μm-radius 0.47t E  0.8σ
cavity, also indicates the actual thickness of each layer. fo = 2 [1 + (r / t)2 ] (14)
r ρm E
Fig. 5(a) and Fig. 5(b) are the frontside and backside images
of the fabricated PMUT wafer, which shows good fabrication where σ is the average residual stress. From Eq. (14),
yield. For dicing the PMUT chips, the wafer was attached to the PMUT resonance frequency is very sensitive to stress

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LUO et al.: AIRBORNE PIEZOELECTRIC MICROMACHINED ULTRASONIC TRANSDUCERS FOR LONG-RANGE DETECTION 5

Fig. 6. The measured PMUT resonances distribution of 72 PMUT chips with

the 400, 500, 625 μm-radius diaphragms, showing the statistic means and
standard deviations (SD) in the figure, and the coefficients of variation (CV)
are 11.7% (625μm), 8.2% (500μm), 3.98% (400μm).

when the ratio of the radius to the thickness(r / t) is large.

A second source of frequency variation is geometric varia-
tions in the PMUT radius (e.g. due to the DRIE undercut)
and thickness. The PMUT etching undercuts are summarized
in Table II. To measure the undercut, five samples each of
PMUT diaphragms with 400, 500, and 625 μm radii located
at the wafer center and the wafer edge, were peeled and
measured. In Table II, the 625 μm PMUTs have on average
a 2.5% over-etched diameter, resulting in an actual radius
of 640 μm, and the PMUTs with 500-μm and 400-μm radii, Fig. 7. The PMUT mechanical measurements: (a) velocity-frequency
response using LDV for 625μm-radius PMUT driven by -20 dBm
have the smaller diaphragms than the ideal cases. Fig. 6 col- (Vp−p ∼63 mV) and 0 dBm (Vp−p ∼ 0.63V), resulting in the
lects the measured data from 72 chips to show the actual resonance-frequency shift from 40kHz to 46kHz. (b) the PMUT resonant
PMUT resonance frequency distributions The resonances of velocity per voltage versus driving power (blue line), and resonant frequency
versus the driving power (red line).
the 625-μm-PMUTs shows 11.7% variation due to the fab-
rication process, and the smaller PMUTs have lower radius
variations.

B. Mechanical Characterization
PMUT mechanical vibration was measured by a single-point
laser Doppler Vibrometer (LDV). The velocity-frequency
response of a 625 μm PMUT is shown in Fig. 7 (a),
indicating the PMUT nonlinear behavior. The blue line
in Fig. 7 (a) shows that PMUT has a 40 kHz resonance
with the displacement around 10.8 μm per volt. The
large-amplitude frequency response (red line in Fig. 7(a)) indi-
cates a resonance frequency shift from 40 kHz to 46 kHz when Fig. 8. Dependence of the PMUT resonance frequency on drive voltage
amplitude. Nonlinear spring-hardening effect causes the resonance frequency
the driving voltage was increased from 63 mV to 0.63 V. The to increase with the input voltage amplitude.
measured results agree with the nonlinear model prediction in
Fig. 2. The PMUT has stronger nonlinear behavior with higher term (kt ∝ t/r 2 ) can be reduced by increasing the PMUT
driving voltages. Fig. 7 (b) depicts the peak velocity per volt radius and decreasing the thickness, resulting in higher driving
and the resonance frequency as the input power is increased efficiency. Also, the nonlinearity can be improved by selecting
from −20 dBm to 10 dBm, showing lower velocity per volt different elastic layers or the silicon wafers with different
and large resonance shift as the driving power is increased. orientations, resulting from appropriate Poisson’s ratios to
In Fig. 8, the PMUT resonant frequency is plotted as a minimize Cv in Eq. (5).
function of input voltage, and the PMUT resonance frequency
goes up as increasing driving voltage. The PMUT SPL per
volt goes down as increasing the input voltage, resulting in C. Electrical Characterization
low efficiency at high driving voltage. To make PMUTs less Fig. 9 demonstrates the electrical characterization for the
nonlinear, Eq. (4) (5) shows that the influence of nonlinear single PMUT element. The electromechanical coupling factor

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6 JOURNAL OF MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS
Fig. 9. The electrical impedance measurement of the 625-μm-radius PMUT,
resulting in k2t = 5.4% and 48 kHz resonance.
TABLE III
C OMPARISON OF PMUT AND C ONVENTIONAL T RANSDUCERS
(kt2 ) can be estimated by the approximation below,
π 2 f a2 − fr2 Cm
kt2 = = (15)
8 fa2 Cm + Co
where fr is the measured resonance frequency at 48 kHz, f a
is the measured anti-resonance frequency at 49.5 kHz, Cm is
the motional capacitance, and Co is the device capacitance
which is calculated as 1.2 nF, resulting in kt2 of 6%, which is
similar to the result in [3], and three times greater than the
result in [20].
V. ACOUSTIC E XPERIMENTS
A. Transmission Performance
Fig. 10(a) shows the measurement result from a pitch-
catch experiment conducted by the 2 × 2 PMUT array and
the calibrated reference microphone (B&K model 4138). The
transmitted pressure from the PMUT array was measured
by the microphone, resulting in 2.07 Pa (100.3 dB SPL) at
33 cm, and the PMUT array was excited by 10 cycles, 5Vp-p
pulsed continuous wave driving at 46 kHz. The fractional
bandwidth of the PMUT array is around 11% estimated by
the decay-time constant (τ ∼ 0.09 ms) of receiving signal
amplitude. The experimental result agrees with the theoretical
calculation in Eq. (9). In comparison, the single PMUT has 4%
fractional bandwidth measured in Fig. 10(b), indicating that
the PMUT array has 2.75X fractional bandwidth of one PMUT
element.
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Fig. 10. The PMUT time-domain response: (a) the pitch-catch acoustic
measurement using the reference microphone, resulting in 100.3 dB SPL
at 30 cm, τ ∼ 0.09mS, Q-factor of 9, and 11% fractional bandwidth. (b)
the mechanical displacement using LDV, showing a decay time-constant (τ )
of 0.2 ms, Q-factor of 25, and 4% fractional bandwidth.
B. Receiving Sensitivity
A commercial transducer (Murata Manufacturing,
MA40S4S) was used for the pitch-catch experiment in Fig. 11.
The commercial transducer delivered 111 dB (SPL) output at
40 kHz resonance frequency at ∼30-cm distance, calibrated
by the reference microphone. A PZT PMUT with 46 kHz
resonance frequency was utilized to measure the transmitted
pressure from the transducer. In Fig. 11(a), the measurement
result indicates that the PMUT sensitivity is around 2 mV/Pa,
which is smaller than the theoretical sensitivity of 2.8 mV/Pa
from Eq (11). The reason of this difference is believed from the
mismatched TX/RX resonance frequencies, and the parasitic
capacitance from the test setup. In Fig. 11(b), the transducer
receiving sensitivity was measure by utilizing the PMUT
transmitter, showing the sensitivity of 5 mV/Pa.
The comparison between the PMUT and the transducer
is shown in Table III, illustrating the better performance of
PMUT.
C. Pulse-Echo Experiments
The pulse-echo experiments were conducted utilizing
two of the 2 × 2 PMUT arrays with matched resonance
frequencies. The SPL measurements of the PMUT arrays are
shown in Fig. 12 with the distances from ∼30 cm to 60 cm
using the reference microphone. Chip-A driven by 10Vp−p
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LUO et al.: AIRBORNE PIEZOELECTRIC MICROMACHINED ULTRASONIC TRANSDUCERS FOR LONG-RANGE DETECTION 7

Fig. 11. Acoustic pitch-catch experiments conducted using a conventional

ultrasonic transducer (Murata MA40S4) and a PMUT array separated by
33 cm distance: (a) the commercial transducer is TX, and the PMUT is RX.
(b) the PMUT is TX, and the transducer is RX.

Fig. 12. The PMUT SPL pressure output versus the measurement distance.
Chip-A driven by 10Vp−p at 48kHz, transmits SPL 109.4dB at 26cm, and
Chip B driven by 10Vp−p at 51kHz, transmits SPL 106.3 dB at 30cm.
at 48 kHz has SPL output of 109.4 dB at 26 cm apart from
the microphone. Chip-B driven by 10Vp−p at 51 kHz has
106.3 dB SPL at 30 cm. The pulse-echo setup schematic is
shown in Fig. 13 (a), two chips were placed on the same
PCB, and a 2-cm-thick plastic plate with an area of 1 × 1 m2
was placed 30 cm to 3.5 m away from the chips. Chip-A was
excited to transmit 20 propagated ultrasound pulses, and the
pulses were reflected by the plastic plate, and the echo was
received by Chip-B. Fig. 13 (b) demonstrates an example
Fig. 13. The pulse-echo experiments: (a) the test setup schematic with Chip-A
and Chip-B. (b) a receiving echo of 0.67mV is measured at 8 ms after the
pulse transmitted, and the noise floor of 0.01mV is captured. (c) the pulse-echo
SNR versus measurement distance, resulting in the maximum traveling range
of 4.8 m (2.4 m for round-trip distance).
of the time-of-flight result, showing 0.65-mV receiving
voltage at 7.7 milliseconds, indicating the traveling distance
of 2.7 m. Fig. 13 (c) sums up the measurement results of
signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), indicating the maximum traveling
distance of 4.8 m with the minimum threshold SNR of 12 dB
[2]. The pulse-echo range detection of 2.4 m was achieved in
this experiment, indicating 2X detectable distance of [3].
VI. C ONCLUSION
Low-frequency airborne PZT PMUTs were designed, fabri-
cated, and characterized in this study. The PMUT resonances

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8 JOURNAL OF MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS
were investigated by measuring the PMUT process variations
and the mechanical nonlinearity. A large PMUT displacement
of 15 μm was achieved with 10 Vp−p input at the PMUT
resonance frequency. A high-pressure output of 109.4 dB SPL
at 26 cm was measured with a wide fractional bandwidth
of 11% by utilizing the 2 × 2 PMUT array. The PMUT receiv-
ing sensitivity of 2 mV/Pa was measured, showing higher
efficiency over conventional PZT transducers. The pulse-echo
experiment was demonstrated using two 2 × 2 PMUT arrays,
resulting in a detectable distance of 2.4 m.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This authors thank UC Berkeley Marvell Nanofabrication
Laboratory for fabrication facilities and Mr. J.-H. Fu’s contri-
bution of SEM cross-section photo.
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Guo-Lun Luo (Student Member, IEEE) received the
B.S. degree in physics/ aeronautics and astronautics
engineering from National Cheng Kung University
in 2011, the M.S. degree in power mechanical engi-
neering from National Tsing Hua University in 2013,
and the Ph.D. degree in mechanical and aerospace
engineering from the University of California, Davis,
CA, in 2019. He was a Senior Research and a
Development Engineer with Asia Pacific Microsys-
tem from 2014 to 2016, and he was a Graduate
Student Researcher with the Berkeley Sensor and
Actuator Center (BSAC) from 2016 to 2019. His research interests include
microfabricated sensors and actuators.
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.

LUO et al.: AIRBORNE PIEZOELECTRIC MICROMACHINED ULTRASONIC TRANSDUCERS FOR LONG-RANGE DETECTION 9

Yuri Kusano received the B.E. degree in applied David A. Horsley (Senior Member, IEEE) received
physics from Keio University, Japan, in 2015, and the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in mechani-
the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and com- cal engineering from the University of California,
puter engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, CA, in 1992, 1994, and 1998, respectively.
Davis, CA, in 2017 and 2019, respectively. She is He is a currently a Professor with the Department of
currently with Facebook Reality Labs as a Research Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University
Scientist. Her research interests include MEMS sen- of California, Davis, CA, an Adjunct Professor with
sors and actuators. the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Univer-
sity of California, Berkeley, CA, and has been a
Co-Director of the Berkeley Sensor and Actuator
Center (BSAC), since 2005. Prior to joining the
faculty at UC Davis, he held research and development positions at Dicon
Fiberoptics, Hewlett Packard Laboratories, and Onix Microsystems. In 2013,
he co-founded Chirp Microsystems to commercialize MEMS ultrasonic trans-
ducers. His research interests include microfabricated sensors and actuators
with applications in ultrasonics and physical sensors. He was a recipient of
the NSF CAREER Award, the UC Davis College of Engineering’s Outstand-
ing Junior Faculty Award, and the NSF I/UCRC Association’s Alexander
Schwarzkopf Award.

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