An ultrasonic probe including a plurality of transducer elements for transmitting an ultrasonic wave and receiving a reflected ultrasonic wave from inside of an object to be examined, electrodes for applying a voltage to the transducer elements, and an acoustic matching layer for taking a matching of an acoustic impedance between the transducer elements and the object to be examined, wherein the acoustic matching layer includes a plurality of materials each of which has a different acoustic impe...

A piezoelectric acoustic sensor including stress-transferring arches to protect the elements at the lateral side surfaces. An array of parallel rod-like or blade-shaped elements is formed from a dense, poled, strongly piezoelectric or electrostrictive ceramic material. The array is encapsulated in a matrix, e.g., a polymeric matrix, to form a two-phase ceramic/polymer composite body exhibiting 1-3 or 2-2 connectivity. The upper and lower ends of the elements are exposed at upper and lower planar...

The present invention provides an acoustic transducer, or an array of such transducers, formed on a single integrated circuit chip, and a method of making the same, in which there is included an array of acoustic transducers, each capable of detecting an acoustic signal and generating a transducer signal, and including a first and second electrode with a void region disposed between the first and second electrode, and at least one signal line associated with one of the first and second electrode...

A piezoelectric composite transducer and method for making same are disclosed. A block of piezoelectric material has a common base and a plurality of uniform-length rods extending from the common base in a parallel spaced-apart fashion to define an array. A first surface region is defined at outboard ends of the rods and a side region is defined about the periphery of the array. Electric conductors extend through the side region, are routed parallel to the first surface region, and are then led ...

An ultrasonic transducer array element operating in the k.sub.31 mode is formed by two piezoelectric subelements joined to form a 2--2 composite by a conductive filler material. An energizing potential is applied to the conductive filler material, and a return potential is applied to the outer opposing faces of the subelements. Preferably the conductive filler material comprises a conductive epoxy. Arrays of such elements in one and two dimensions are formed with the conductive epoxy in alternat...

A two dimensional ultrasonic transducer array suitable for three dimensional phased array scanning is formed of hexagonally close packed transducer elements. In a preferred embodiment the transducer elements have a rectilinear shape, allowing the array to be fabricated with conventional dicing saw processes.

An ultrasound transducer array (250) in which the piezoelectric layer (256) and the matching layer(s) (258) have different sub-dicing. In one embodiment, the piezoelectric layer (256) is diced only once and the matching layer(s) (258) is diced more than once. A resulting transducer shows improved bandwidth, crosstalk and noise performance.

Noise effects in a disc drive having a disc on a rotating spindle in a housing are reduced by inducing vibrations in the housing of the disc drive that at least partially cancel a characteristic acoustic noise signal of the drive.

A megasonic cleaning system comprised of a container, a resonator, a piezoelectric crystal and an indium layer for attaching the resonator to the piezoelectric crystal. The container includes a fluid chamber for holding a volume of cleaning solution. The resonator is selected from the group consisting of sapphire, quartz, silicon carbide, silicon nitride and ceramic. The resonator forms the bottom of the container and has an interface surface which abuts the fluid chamber.

A curved sensor device, such as an ultrasonic transducer array, is fabricated from a flat micromachined sensor (such as cMUT or pMUT) array constructed using micromachined electromechanical systems (MEMS) techniques. The device comprises: a support structure comprising a spine having a profile that is generally curved and a multiplicity of teeth extending from one side of the curved spine; and a multiplicity of sensors built on the support structure. The spine can be bent forward or backward and...