Wearable flexible ultrasonic transducers: materials, applications, and challenges

IF 4.8 2区物理与天体物理 Q1 ACOUSTICS

Ultrasonics Pub Date : 2026-03-01 Epub Date: 2025-10-18 DOI:10.1016/j.ultras.2025.107872

Lin Guo , Jing Liu , Ying Li , Ruixia Xu , Guangsheng Song , Jianan Wu , Zhihui Qian , Lei Ren , Luquan Ren , Qiang Zhou

{"title":"Wearable flexible ultrasonic transducers: materials, applications, and challenges","authors":"Lin Guo , Jing Liu , Ying Li , Ruixia Xu , Guangsheng Song , Jianan Wu , Zhihui Qian , Lei Ren , Luquan Ren , Qiang Zhou","doi":"10.1016/j.ultras.2025.107872","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Flexible Ultrasonic Transducers (FUTs) represent a rapidly evolving technology in wearable medical devices, enabling real-time, noninvasive, and continuous physiological monitoring on curved and moving body surfaces. By combining advanced piezoelectric materials with stretchable electrodes and soft encapsulation layers, FUTs overcome the limitations of traditional rigid transducers, including poor conformability, limited wearability, and the potential to cause pressure-induced deformation of the imaging target. This review first summarizes the working principles and typical architectures of FUTs, highlighting key material systems such as flexible substrates and electrodes, high-performance piezoelectric elements, flexible backing and matching layers, and electronic systems. It also summarizes the applications of FUTs in areas such as novel ultrasound diagnostic methods, ultrasonic treatment, advancing healthcare accessibility, and human–machine interaction. Finally, the paper discusses some of the technical challenges faced by FUTs and their corresponding future works, including long-term wearable performance, miniaturization, wireless capability, and the array element localization problem.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":23522,"journal":{"name":"Ultrasonics","volume":"159 ","pages":"Article 107872"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8000,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Ultrasonics","FirstCategoryId":"101","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0041624X25003099","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2025/10/18 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ACOUSTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Flexible Ultrasonic Transducers (FUTs) represent a rapidly evolving technology in wearable medical devices, enabling real-time, noninvasive, and continuous physiological monitoring on curved and moving body surfaces. By combining advanced piezoelectric materials with stretchable electrodes and soft encapsulation layers, FUTs overcome the limitations of traditional rigid transducers, including poor conformability, limited wearability, and the potential to cause pressure-induced deformation of the imaging target. This review first summarizes the working principles and typical architectures of FUTs, highlighting key material systems such as flexible substrates and electrodes, high-performance piezoelectric elements, flexible backing and matching layers, and electronic systems. It also summarizes the applications of FUTs in areas such as novel ultrasound diagnostic methods, ultrasonic treatment, advancing healthcare accessibility, and human–machine interaction. Finally, the paper discusses some of the technical challenges faced by FUTs and their corresponding future works, including long-term wearable performance, miniaturization, wireless capability, and the array element localization problem.

查看原文本刊更多论文

可穿戴柔性超声换能器：材料、应用和挑战。

柔性超声换能器（FUTs）代表了可穿戴医疗设备中快速发展的技术，能够对弯曲和移动的身体表面进行实时、无创和连续的生理监测。通过将先进的压电材料与可拉伸电极和软封装层相结合，fut克服了传统刚性换能器的局限性，包括一致性差、耐磨性有限以及可能导致成像目标的压力诱导变形。本文首先总结了FUTs的工作原理和典型结构，重点介绍了柔性衬底和电极、高性能压电元件、柔性衬底和匹配层以及电子系统等关键材料系统。本文还总结了FUTs在新型超声诊断方法、超声治疗、提高医疗可及性和人机交互等领域的应用。最后，本文讨论了fut面临的一些技术挑战及其相应的未来工作，包括长期可穿戴性能、小型化、无线能力和阵列元件定位问题。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Ultrasonics 医学-核医学

CiteScore

7.60

自引率

19.00%

发文量

186

审稿时长

3.9 months

期刊介绍： Ultrasonics is the only internationally established journal which covers the entire field of ultrasound research and technology and all its many applications. Ultrasonics contains a variety of sections to keep readers fully informed and up-to-date on the whole spectrum of research and development throughout the world. Ultrasonics publishes papers of exceptional quality and of relevance to both academia and industry. Manuscripts in which ultrasonics is a central issue and not simply an incidental tool or minor issue, are welcomed. As well as top quality original research papers and review articles by world renowned experts, Ultrasonics also regularly features short communications, a calendar of forthcoming events and special issues dedicated to topical subjects.