July 20, 2010 - PI Ceramic released a white paper on the development and test of highly reliable multilayer piezo actuators. Piezoelectric multilayer actuators are the driving force behind the most challenging motion control applications when it comes to speed and precision. They have found use in fields as different as injection valves for combustion engines (speed) and atomic force microscopy (precision). These types of actuators have been in use for about two decades and have reached maturity several years ago.
Continuous improvements are based on long term tests and exact knowledge of the environmental operating conditions and failure modes allows to push the limits of this technology even further.The paper describes the development and lifetime tests of ceramic encapsulated actuators under different operating conditions (DC and AC). The actuators are compared to polymer coated piezo ceramic actuators in long term tests. Equations and graphs for lifetime calculation under different operational and environmental conditions and special internal electrode designs for stress reduction are discussed.
