The mechanisms for micromechanical actuation that are most practical, and have been the most applied, are electrostatic attraction and piezoelectric effect. Both scale well into mirro-dimensions, are relatively compatible with microfabrication processes, and are also suitable for displacement sensing. Of the two, piezoelectric devices are much better able to provide strong forces, and while ele...

The piezoelectric micro-jet, which can achieve the drop-on-demand requirement, is based on ink-jet technology and small droplets can be ejected out by precise control. The droplets are driven out of the nozzle by the acoustic pressure waves which are generated by the piezoelectric vibrator. The propagation processes of the acoustic pressure waves are affected by the acoustic properties of the f...

A mechatronic system based on the micro-macro-kinematic consists of an industrial robot and a piezoelectric stage mounted on the robot’s end-effector and has to carry out operations like micro-assembly or micro-milling. The piezoelectric stage has to compensate the positioning error of the robot. Therefore, the position of the robot’s end-effector has to be measured with high accuracy. This pap...

Problem statement: Piezoelectric actuator is a kind of key driving components for micropositioning stages, micropumps, micro valves, micro gripper and so on in the fields of micro/nano technology such as integrated circuit manufacturing, precision instruments, ultra precision fabrication, biomedical manipulation. It has lots of advantages including high stiffness, fast response times, less heat...

• Structure–piezoelectric–circuit interaction in circuit-integrated piezoelectric vibrator. Strongly coupled partitioned iterative method for three fields. Hierarchical decomposition, block Gauss–Seidel method, and loop union. Shell inverse-piezoelectric solid direct-piezoelectric finite element analyses. Accurate numerical solutions of shunt damping energy harvesting. The key to the design adv...

Piezoelectric materials can be used as a means of transforming ambient vibrations into electrical energy that can be stored and used to power other devices. With the recent surge of micro scale devices, piezoelectric power generation can provide a convenient alternative to traditional power sources used to operate certain types of sensors/actuators, telemetry, and MEMS devices. However, the ene...

This paper analyses scale effects for actuator types which are strong candidates for micro-actuation: shape memory alloys (SMAS), electrostatic, electromagnetic and piezoelectric actuators. SMA actuators are studied in detail and compared to the other actuator types on a basis of force, response time, and power densi~. Much of the analysis is based on thermal aspects and scaling effects on both...