Advanced Ultrasonic Medical Imaging Transducers

描述(由申请人提供)： 第一阶段将演示由嵌入聚合物的PZT柱模压复合材料制造医用超声换能器的可行性。这种材料的性能优于目前采用“骰子和填充法”制成的材料。拟议的技术将导致阵列换能器的成本和生产时间的减少。所提出的方法适用于单个单元和阵列。具有320个单元的商用1.75D相控阵的生产被提议作为第一阶段的里程碑。 该团队的背景和工具将使PZT粉末掺杂、烧结和致密化、形状微造型、有限元分析中的压电特性建模、梁建模、测量和图像质量分析的开发成为可能。 精密模塑复合材料提供了在阵列换能器中经济地建造叠层的机会。该团队将设计、建造和广泛测试阵列部分的堆叠。预计这些堆栈将由四个不同高度的层进行调整，以创建一个极宽的带宽设备。 用于特定应用的换能器可以从该团队将描述的预制材料清单中设计和制造。一系列建模程序将与材料集成在一起，使研究人员能够快速获得低成本、高性能的换能器。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Phase I will demonstrate the feasibility of fabricating medical ultrasonic transducers from a molded composite material of PZT pillars embedded in a polymer. The material has superior properties to the current material made by "dice and fill". The proposed techniques would lead to reductions in costs and production times of array transducers. The methods proposed are applicable to single elements and arrays. The production of a commercially useful 1.75D phased array with 320 elements is proposed as a milestone for Phase I. The team's background and tooling will allow development of PZT powder doping, sintering and densification, micro molding of shapes, modeling of piezo characteristics in FEA, beam modeling, measurement and image quality analysis. Precisely molded composite materials provide the opportunity to economically construct stacks in array transducers. The team will design, build and extensively test stacks of array sections. The stacks are anticipated to be four differing height layers tuned to create an extremely wide bandwidth device. Transducers for a specific application could be designed and manufactured from a list of prefabricated materials that the team will characterize. A collection of modeling programs would be integrated with the materials to allow researchers access to low cost high performance transducers with rapid delivery.