Design and fabrication of a sonophoresis device with a flat flextensional transducer for transdermal drug delivery

The development of ultrasound enhanced transdermal drug delivery technology (or sonophoresis) has received increasing attention over the recent years. Significant enhanced transportation of model drugs such as insulin and mannitol has been demonstrated using commercial sonicators. However, its practical use is hindered by its large size and weight of the conventional ultrasound transducer devices. In this research work, a sonophoresis device with a flat flextensional ultrasound transducer is proposed. Three different material types of vibration plates were simulated by finite element method. The proposed flat flextensional ultrasound transducer is fabricated and its characteristics are investigated. The simulation result of first resonance frequency is found to be comparable to that of the experimental result. In comparison with the other types of flextensional ultrasound transducers, it has a simple structure and its fabrication process is easy and inexpensive. The proposed transducer device produced intensity comparable to those achieved using commercial sonicators. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.