A novel piston-type micromirror with a stroke of up to 20 μm at 20 V formed out of a silicon-on-insulator wafer with integrated piezoelectric actuators was designed, fabricated and characterized. The peak-to-valley planarity of a 2 mm diameter mirror was better than 15 nm, and tip-to-tip tilt upon actuation less than 30 nm. A resonance frequency of 9.8 kHz was measured. Analytical and finite element models were developed and compared to measurements. The design is based on a silicon-on-insulator wafer where the circular mirror is formed out of the handle silicon, thus forming a thick, highly rigid and ultra-planar mirror surface. The mirror plate is connected to a supporting frame through a membrane formed out of the device silicon layer. A piezoelectric actuator made of lead-zirconate-titanate (PZT) thin film is structured on top of the membrane, providing mirror deflection by deformation of the membrane. Two actuator designs were tested: one with a single ring and the other with a double ring providing bidirectional movement of the mirror. The fabricated mirrors were characterized by white light interferometry to determine the static and temporal response as well as mirror planarity.

No abstract

Capacitive ultrasonic tranducers, cMUTs rely on the electrostatic field between the membrane and a back plate for sensing andactuation. This is an excellent solution for small amplitudes. But the movement of the membrane is physically limited by the bottom plate (risk of collapse). Furthermore, pull-in and linearity considerations restrict the available range to about one percent of thegap. Piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducers, pMUTs, on the other hand have no such restrictions. The excitation is basedon lateral contraction of a thin film of Lead Zirconate Titanate, PZT, deposited on top of the membrane. Then there is no need for abackplate, and the linear range is greatly increased. Therefore, pMUTs are ideally suited for applications demanding large excitationamplitude, such as high intensity focused ultrasound, HIFU. In this work, we present pMUTs designed for HIFU operation around 1MHz.