Beamforming with AlN-based bimorph piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducers

Neuromorphic object localization using resistive memories and ultrasonic transducers

“…2a, see Methods for more details). Over a batch of 10 tested devices, the median quality factor is around 50 31 . Combining the information of different membranes is a well-known technique to infer angular information from pMUT devices, using for instance beamforming techniques 31,49 .…”

“…Over a batch of 10 tested devices, the median quality factor is around 50 31 . Combining the information of different membranes is a well-known technique to infer angular information from pMUT devices, using for instance beamforming techniques 31,49 . The potential of this technology for air-borne pulse-echo measurements has been demonstrated using a beamforming strategy on a system composed of a pMUT emitter (composed of 1 membrane) and a pMUT receiver system (made of 5 pMUT membranes arranged in an array with a pitch of 1.5 mm), located few centimeters apart from each other 31 .…”

“…PMUT sensors for Time-of-Flight measurement. Piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducers are scalable ultrasound sensors that can be integrated with advanced CMOS technology [31][32][33]47 , and have lower actuating voltage and power consumption than conventional bulk transducers 48 . In our work, the diameter of the membrane is 440µm and the resonance frequency spreads in the range [110 − 117]k Hz (Fig.…”

“…Combining the information of different membranes is a well-known technique to infer angular information from pMUT devices, using for instance beamforming techniques 31,49 . The potential of this technology for air-borne pulse-echo measurements has been demonstrated using a beamforming strategy on a system composed of a pMUT emitter (composed of 1 membrane) and a pMUT receiver system (made of 5 pMUT membranes arranged in an array with a pitch of 1.5 mm), located few centimeters apart from each other 31 . We conducted an experiment locating two pMUT sensors about 10 cm apart from each other, thus fully taking advantage of the different ToF of sound being sensed by the two receiving membranes.…”

“…Their inherent non-volatility -not requiring active power consumption to store or refresh the information -matches the asynchronous event-driven nature of neuromorphic computation perfectly, resulting in virtually no power consumption when the system is idle. Piezoelectric micromachined ultrasound transducers (pMUTs) are low-cost, miniaturized silicon-based ultrasound sensors able to act as emitters and receivers [30][31][32][33][34] . To process the signals captured by the embedded sensors, we have taken inspiration from the neuroanatomy of the barn owl [35][36][37] .…”