Professor Songbin Gong and researchers from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering have developed a design strategy and method for fabricating efficient piezoelectric micro-machined ultrasonic transducer (pMUT) optimizing both ultrasonic transmitter and receiver performance in a combined platform. Currently, there are two leading material types for pMUTs : ferroelectric perovskites with solid solutions containing PbTiO3, like PZT and PMN-PT (primarily used as transducers ) and the non-ferroelectric structures such as AlN (primarily used as sensors). This balanced ultrasonic transceiver can be implemented in miniature ultrasound applications, specifically in consumer electronics for gesture recognition, biometric sensing and occupancy sensing.