Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.
For the first time we have characterized a micromotor driven by a piezoelectric PZT (PbZrxTi1-xO3) thin film. Sputter and sol-gel techniques have been applied for the deposition of the PZT films onto a silicon stator membrane, which is 20-30 mu m thick and has a diameter of 4 mm. The amplitudes of the membrane deflections are measured by means of laser interferometry. They are as large as 800 nm V-1 at the first resonance (26 kHz) and 60 nm V-1 at 1 kHz. This is one order of magnitude larger than previously reported for a ZnO-activated device of similar geometry. The motor operates at 1-3 V-r.m.s., with speeds of up to 200 rpm at 1.1 V-r.m.s. and torques of 35 nN m at 2.5 V-r.m.s. and 1 mN force between rotor and stator. Compared with the conceptually identical ZnO version published by Racine et al., this is an improvement by a factor of three in speed per volt. Taking into account the linear increase of the torque with the stator vibration frequency, the torque per volt is a factor of two higher. A long-term test of 100 h showed no degradation of the motor performance.
Loading
Loading
Loading
Loading
Roland Luthier, Thomas Maeder, Paul Muralt, Nava Setter
Davide Balma, Nachiappan Chidambaram, Alex Dommann, Andrea Mazzalai, Paul Muralt, Antonia Neels, Silviu Cosmin Sandu