Vermon
Vermon is a French company, created in 1984, specialized in designing and manufacturing customized state-of-the-art ultrasound transducers and probes for medical and industrial applications. The company generated a global sales of 60 M€ in 2022 with 380 people located in France and in the United States.
Vermon has been leading the piezoelectric composite technology by development and industrialization actions in order to enhance ultrasound transducers state of the art. To further extend this position, Vermon designs, produces and controls all transducer acoustic components, manufacturing tools and technologies. The industrial organization addresses a very diverse customer base, from early-stage R&D performers to ultrasound market leaders, over a very broad product portfolio. Moreover, VERMON has developed a comprehensive set of tools to characterize the transducers at different scales and all ultrasound transducers and probes are manufactured in facilities under ISO 13485 and ISO 14001 Quality Management Systems.
Vermon invests around 12 % of its revenue in R&D with over 80 engineers and technicians in research and development. More precisely, Vermon is deeply involved in the development of MEMS-based ultrasonic transducers, such as capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers (CMUT) and piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducers (PMUT). Vermon manages the designing part of those MEMS as well as the manufacturing process. For R&D activities, Vermon has an open access to the technology platform CERTeM, equipped with 2500 m² cleanrooms and high-end equipment in the field of microelectronics.
Role of institution in the project
Vermon is especially involved in WP 2 and WP 6. In these WPs, Vermon will bring knowledge on the requirements for the targeted applications and will contribute to the development of two prototypes. The first one is a hybrid cardiac probe where the emission is ensured by a standard piezoelectric probe and the reception by an IPUT device. The performances will be evaluated and compared with the reference technology of the application, also provided by Vermon. The second prototype targets photoacoustics. This prototype consists of a laser source for ultrasonic emission and IPUT technology for reception.
Dominique Gross
Dominique Gross received his engineering degree (M.S) in 2010 from the École Nationale Supérieure d’Ingenieurs du Mans, Le Mans Université, France, and his Ph.D. degree in 2015 from the GREMAN laboratory, University of Tours, France. His Ph.D. was entitled “Design and evaluation of ultrasound-guided focused ultrasound CMUT probe for targeted therapy”. After two years as a postdoctoral fellow in the same institution, he joined Vermon in 2017 as a research engineer working on the development of the CMUT technology. He is currently a project manager in the Active Probe Department, focused both on research program involving MEMS-based transducers and on the development of specific products embedding these transducers.
Nicolas Pousset
Nicolas Pousset has an Engineering Degree in Optronics from Polytech Paris-Saclay (2006) and a PhD in Metrology from the Cnam Paris (2009). After a few years as R&D project manager and Manager of a photometry laboratory in a company dedicated to the design of LED lighting fixtures, he joined a french cluster composed of 250 industrial and academic members in the field of smart electricity and electronic systems. During 10 years, he held several positions from scientific advisor to CTO. Through several years’ experience in the innovation, public funding of R&D projects and economic development fields with operational and managerial positions, Nicolas joined Vermon in 2022 as Administrative Manager of R&D.
Nicolas Sénégond
Nicolas Sénégond received the Engineering degree in 2005 from INSAVL, Blois, France; the M.S. degree in 2006 and the Ph.D. degree in 2010 from Tours University, France, all in electrical engineering. He joined Vermon in 2010, where he started as R&D project manager and is currently deputy director of the Active Probe Department. His interests have been in both micromachined acoustic and bulk piezoelectric devices but also in integrated systems for medical ultrasound imaging and therapy.
