Liwei Lin (Advisor)

This work presents an evolutionary design framework for the horn package design of piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducers (PMUTs). By utilizing a commercial TDK PMUT, our new package design with measured results has demonstrated three distinctive advancements: (1) ~2× (one hundred percent) peak acoustic pressure enhancement as compared with the original TDK horn package of the same form factor; (2) a full-wave, simulation-based optimization platform to maximize the acoustic pressure; and (3) a ~5.15× increase in peak pressure amplitude when compared with the PMUT without any...

This work presents an evolutionary design framework for the horn package design of arrays of piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducers (PMUTs). Our framework integrates high fidelity acoustic simulations, formulations for arbitrary three-dimensional horn geometries, and a custom genetic algorithm–based shape optimization strategy to customize and improve PMUT array wave directivity and amplitude in health care and wearable devices applications.

Project is currently funded by: Industry Sponsored Research

This project develops micro flying robots enabled by electromagnetic actuation and beamforming-based control, eliminating the need for onboard power sources. Distributed coil arrays generate spatially programmable magnetic fields that provide wireless power delivery and open-loop flight control through field shaping, without onboard sensing or computation. Magnetic beamforming enables stable untethered flight and maneuverability at sub-centimeter scales. The work establishes a general framework for wireless actuation of micro-scale flying robots and other untethered micro-...