Improving Performance of Ultrasound Transducers with Aerogel Matching Layer for Tactile Display

摘要

Focused ultrasound is emerging as a novel technique for mid-air tactile display. A striking limitation is the low transduction of ultrasound energy due, in part, to the massive acoustic impedance mismatch between the piezoelectric transducer and air. This paper investigates the use of silica aerogel alloys as a matching layer to improve transduction efficiency in air for mid-air tactile display. Two transducers are manually machined and evaluated to proof-concept the theory proposed in this paper. Results demonstrated that the manually machined transducers produce 2-3 dBV acoustic energy in air compared to the commercially available transducer. Future work involves exploring an automated process to machine a large number of these transducers and buiding an array with the modified transducers in order to perceptually evaluate the performance for tactile display.