Design and modeling of a novel high sensitive MEMS piezoelectric vector hydrophone

In this paper, a novel micro electromechanical systems (MEMS) piezoelectric hydrophone with the ability to detect the direction of the sound in two dimensions was designed and analyzed. Piezoelectric hydrophones are widely used today. These devices constitute the main part of the sonar systems. Sonars are used in marine vessels and for transportation of marine military equipment, such as submarines and battleships. Hydrophones work by converting received sound pressure to electrical signals. The idea of the present paper for designing hydrophones is taken from sea creatures and use artificial hair cell structure. This structure not only has the advantages of piezoelectric sensors such as being active and having optimal sensitivity, but it is also able to detect the direction of the sound and work at low frequencies, the performance of the sensor has been improved compared with the previous works (Ito et al. in Sens Actuators, 2008; Choi et al. in Sens Actuators, 2010; Guan et al. in Microsyst Technol, 2011; Sens Actuators, 2012; Zhang et al. in Design of a monolithic integrated three-dimensional MEMS bionic vector hydrophone, 2014), in a way that its sensitivity is − 191 dB in the frequency range of below 10.4 kHz (0 dB re 1 V/μPa).