Nano-positioning technology has been widely used in many fields, such as microelectronics, optical engineering, and micro manufacturing. This paper presents a one-dimensional (1D) nano-positioning system, adopting a piezoelectric ceramic (PZT) actuator and a multi-objective topological optimal structure. The combination of a nano-positioning stage and a feedback capacitive comb sensor has been ...

1. Abstract This paper presents a new method developed for the optimal design of piezoactive compliant mechanisms. It is based on a flexible building blocks method, called FlexIn, which uses an evolutionary approach, to optimize a truss-like structure made of passive and active piezoelectric building blocks. An electromechanical approach, based on a mixed finite element method, is used to estab...

Considered is the interaction of macro-and micro-cracks in an anisotropic piezoelectric solid. The GreenÕs function and principle of superposition are used to formulate a system of singular integral equations for solving the unknown temperature discontinuity and elastic displacement-electric potential. The residual heat ̄ux, stress and electric displacement on the microcrack are evaluated direc...

Conventional sensors, such as proximeters and accelerometers, are add-on devices usually adding additional weights to structures and machines. Health monitoring of flexible structures by electroactive smart materials has been investigated over the years. Thin-film piezoelectric material, e.g. polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) polymeric material, is a lightweight and dynamic sensitive material appe...

We report the development of a new class of miniature all-polymer flow sensors that closely mimic the intricate morphology of the mechanosensory ciliary bundles in biological hair cells. An artificial ciliary bundle is achieved by fabricating bundled polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) micro-pillars with graded heights and electrospinning polyvinylidenefluoride (PVDF) piezoelectric nanofiber tip links....

A piezoelectric ultrasonic resonant micro-motor is developed with a stator diameter of 241 μm and an overall diameter of 400 μm. The motor is shown to produce a start-up torque of 1.2 nN m and a peak output power of 0.25 μW as designed, with a preload of 46.6 μN. An increase in preload to 2264 μN improved the performance to a start-up torque of 29 nN m and a peak output power of 9.1 μW. The mot...