Flexible ultrasound arrays

Piezoelectric transducer has been widely used in medical imaging and industrial nondestructive testing. However, surface of the detected targets are usually constrained to flat or simple curvature to the proper transmission of ultrasound waves. Motivated by flexible display, integration of piezoelectric transducers with soft, elastomeric substrate reveals the potential to image arbitrary shapes of targets. Flexible and stretchable PMN-PT single crystal transducer arrays are being investigated for biomedical and NDE applications.

FlextensionalTransducer-1

FlextensionalTransducer-2

Acoustic field modeling of a flexible 2D array

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