Modeling and characterization of a micromachined artificial hair cell vector hydrophone

In the paper, a micromachined artificial vector hydrophone arises from a biological inspiration, the fish hair cell is presented. It is desirable that the application of piezoresistive effects combined with ingenious bionic structure and MEMS technology may improve the low-frequency sensitivity of the vector hydrophone as well as its miniaturization. Modeling processes for realizing the artificial hair cell hydrophone, along with preliminary characterization results in terms of sensitivity, frequency response and directivity patterns are also introduced. The microstructure of the sensor consists of four vertical cantilever beams with attached rigid plastic cylinder in the center of the structure. By locating eight piezoresistors logically formed the Wheatstone bridges; they can detect two components of underwater acoustic signal simultaneously. The prepared vector hydrophone has been measured in the standing wave field finally. The experiment results show that the vector hydrophone has good low-frequency characteristic, the free-field voltage sensitivity is −197.2 dB (0 dB = 1 V/μPa) at 400 Hz with a about 2 dB one-third octave positive slope over the 40–400 Hz bandwidth. The depth of pits of the directivity pattern is about 34.6 dB.