> The solution to these problems came from Khuri-Yakub’s lab at Stanford University. In experiments in the early 2000s, the researchers found that increasing the voltage on CMUT-like structures caused the electrostatic forces to overcome the restoring forces of the membrane. As a result, the center of the membrane collapses onto the substrate.
A collapsed membrane seemed disastrous at first but turned out to be a way of making CMUTs both more efficient and more tunable to different frequencies[...]
> The solution to these problems came from Khuri-Yakub’s lab at Stanford University. In experiments in the early 2000s, the researchers found that increasing the voltage on CMUT-like structures caused the electrostatic forces to overcome the restoring forces of the membrane. As a result, the center of the membrane collapses onto the substrate. A collapsed membrane seemed disastrous at first but turned out to be a way of making CMUTs both more efficient and more tunable to different frequencies[...]