LAUSR

In this paper we have explored central annular ring metallized capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) structure. The metallization is done partially and it is patterned in such a way that it forms a flat ring on the surface of the membrane. This will decrease the price of the device as the need of metallization is less. Moreover, it is seen that the maximum displacement that the membrane can attain just before collapsing does not change even for partial metallization. It is perceived that with decreasing the area of the electrode the collapse voltage increases and vice versa. Changing the gap height has a huge impact on the collapse voltage. We have also examined the effect of different membrane materials on collapse voltage. Changing the membrane thickness hardly affects the value of collapse voltage. The electrode thickness is infinitesimally small as compared to the membrane thickness and is neglected in the analytical modeling approach. The analytical results are compared with three-dimensional (3-D) finite element method (FEM) model results. Excellent agreements between them are observed.