Piezo multilayer actuator white paper

Aug. 4, 2010—Called the driving force behind the most challenging nanopositioning applications, piezoelectric multilayer actuators have been in use for about two decades and reached maturity several years ago, according to a whitepaper published by PI Ceramic, a piezotechnology company based in Lindenstrasse, Germany.

Click image to download whitepaper.

The whitepaper, according to the abstract, "presents the results of an extensive study involving up to four environmental chambers and more than 1,000 actuator samples to develop a grid of 13 humidity and temperature conditions. Weibull-analysis is used at every condition to determine the DC-voltage dependent lifetime of the co-fired PICMA® multilayer actuators.

"In addition to the DC tests," the abstract continued, "behavior under large-signal AC conditions with up to 10¹⁰ cycles for different functions as well as temperature conditions was also evaluated. Three patented design features of the latest actuator generation are based on the findings."

Download the whitepaper here.