A 2-DIMENSIONAL ARRAY PROBE USING AN INSULATING LAYER AND A SIGNAL LINE ON THE VIBRATOR

A two-dimensional array probe using a newly developed method for drawi ng out signal lines is proposed. In this probe, an insulating layer an d a conductive layer with about 10 mum total thickness are deposited o n one electrode of a vibrator. The insulating layer has a through-hole to connect the electrode to the conductive layer. The conductive laye r is patterned to inner signal lines that are terminated at both edges on the side of the vibrator. An outer signal line is drawn from each signal line terminal of the vibrator by wire bonding. The specificatio ns of the fabricated two-dimensional array probe are 5 MHz. 30 x 5 ele ments and two acoustic matching layers. The pulse-echo characteristic and directional response of an element were evaluated, and a -6 dB ban dwidth of 64% and -20 dB pulse-echo directional response of 10-degrees were obtained. This measured bandwidth was not drastically reduced as compared with that of a conventional probe, and the measured directio nal response became slightly narrower as compared with the calculated result.