The Smart Bubble is a cheap, dispensable but robust MEMS sonar transducer which makes possible long term, widely distributed monitoring of the ocean. Analysis of the signals gathered by these devices holds the key to understanding climate change, large-scale weather patterns, and the environmental and biological effects of pollution. There are, however, several challenges to miniaturization of the electroacoustic transducer used for sonar imaging. In this SuperUROP project my role will be to design and test a capacitive chip-scale hydrophone alternative to standard electromechanically driven, heavy plate Tonpilz transducers. Frequency scaling and bandwidth optimization for high sensitivity are among the strategies proposed.

I think my background in physics will help me to be good in this project. ‘It it exciting for me to try some new field that I haven’t learned before and become good in it. It is exciting that this project will include some machining and experiments, since I’m very interested in hardware.