Enhancement of Ultrasonic Transducer Bandwidth by Acoustic Impedance Gradient Matching Layer

High-performance broadband ultrasound transducers provide superior imaging quality in biomedical ultrasound imaging. However, a matching design that perfectly transmits the acoustic energy between the active piezoelectric element and the target medium over the operating spectrum is still lacking. In this work, an anisotropic gradient acoustic impedance composite material as the matching layer of an ultrasonic transducer was designed and fabricated; it is a non-uniform material with the continuous decline of acoustic impedance along the direction of ultrasonic propagation in a sub-wavelength range. This material provides a broadband window for ultrasonic propagation in a wide frequency range and achieves almost perfect sound energy transfer efficiency from the piezoelectric material to the target medium. Nano tungsten particles and epoxy resin were selected as filling and basic materials, respectively. Along the direction of ultrasonic propagation, the proportion of tungsten powder was carefully controlled to decrease gradually, following the natural exponential form in a very narrow thickness range. Using this new material as a matching layer with high-performance single crystals, the -6 dB bandwidth of the PMN-PT ultrasonic transducer could reach over 170%, and the insertion loss was only -20.3 dB. The transducer achieved a temporal signal close to a single wavelength, thus there is the potential to dramatically improve the resolution and imaging quality of the biomedical ultrasound imaging system.