Design and fabrication of a high performance multilayer piezoelectric actuator with bending deformation

A new bending mode multimorph actuator was designed and fabricated successf ully by a multiple screen printing process. Unlike the conventional bimorph actuator in which the bend occurs in the thickness direction, the bend in the multimorph actuator occurs in the widthwise direction because of synchr onistical deformation of each single monolithic layer in the multilayer str ucture. The theoretical analysis and experimental measurements were conduct ed to study the performance of this type of actuator, and a comparison was made with the conventional bimorph actuator, Larger displacement, higher re sonance frequency, and much larger blocking force could be achieved with th e multimorph actuator than with a bimorph actuator of similar dimensions. T he multimorph actuator presented in this paper provides a valuable alternat ive for actuator applications beyond those available with the popular bimor ph and longitudinal multilayer actuators.