The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jan. 06, 2015
Filed:
Jun. 19, 2006
Applicant:
Yongli Huang, San Jose, CA (US);
Inventor:
Yongli Huang, San Jose, CA (US);
Assignee:
Kolo Technologies, Inc., San Jose, CA (US);
Attorney:
Primary Examiner:
Int. Cl.
CPC ...
A61B 8/14 (2006.01); B06B 1/06 (2006.01); H04R 19/00 (2006.01); B06B 1/02 (2006.01); B81B 3/00 (2006.01); G01N 29/24 (2006.01); H01L 41/09 (2006.01);
U.S. Cl.
CPC ...
B06B 1/0292 (2013.01); H01L 41/0973 (2013.01); B81B 3/0021 (2013.01); G01N 29/2406 (2013.01);
Abstract
A curved or bendable micro-electro-mechanical transducer (such as the cMUT) is disclosed. The transducer has a plurality of transducer elements built on a substrate. The substrate has a slot below every two neighboring device elements. Each slot is at least at least partially filled with a flexible material to allow bending of the substrate. A bending actuator may be included to facilitate the bending of the substrate. An exemplary bending actuator uses a nonuniformly shrinkable material to bend the substrate. A curved or bendable cMUT of the present invention can be configured to be an intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) device.