Scientists develop ultrasonic fingerprint sensor

Instrumentation World Network Tips: The fingerprint sensor currently used in smart phones can only capture two-dimensional images of the finger's surface, so you can easily deceive it with a fingerprint print. However, this defect may soon be improved: Recently, a research team at the University of California has developed a new type of 3D fingerprint recognition technology using ultrasonic sensors, and its security is far ahead of existing fingerprint sensors.

The fingerprint sensors currently used in smartphones can only capture two-dimensional images of the finger's surface, so you can easily deceive them with just a fingerprint print. However, this defect may soon be improved: Recently, a research team at the University of California has developed a new type of 3D fingerprint recognition technology using ultrasonic sensors, and its security is far ahead of existing fingerprint sensors.

According to reports, this ultrasonic sensor can scan the surface of the fingerprint and the bottom of the channel structure, so a fingerprint floor plan alone can not deceive it.

The basic principle of this sensor is similar to the ultrasonic imaging technology used in medicine. The researchers created a miniature ultrasonic imager that can be used to observe shallow tissues near the surface of the fingerprint. Specifically, the transducer on the surface of the scanning chip can emit an ultrasonic pulse, and the pulse is reflected after reaching the finger surface, and the sensor can use the reflected pulse to obtain the three-dimensional information of the fingerprint.

The research team used the existing micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) technology in the production of the imager—this is exactly the technology that the smartphone microphone and positioning and orientation functions rely on, and on this basis it has been improved.

In addition to biometrics and information security, this new technology can also be applied in many other fields, such as low-cost medical diagnostic tools or personal health monitoring devices.