Design, fabrication and testing of piezoelectric polymer PVDF microactuators

Piezoelectric polymers are increasingly considered as favorable materials for microactuator applications due to their fast response, low operating voltages and greater efficiencies of operation. However, the difficulty of forming structures and shapes has so far limited the range of mechanical design. In this work, the design and fabrication of a unimorph piezoelectric cantilever actuator using piezoelectric polymer polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) with an electroplated layer of nickel iron (permalloy) alloy is described. The modeling and simulation of the composite cantilever was performed using CoventorWare to optimize the design parameters in order to achieve large tip deflections. These simulation results indicated that the thicknesses of both the piezo and non-piezo layers of the composite cantilever affect the magnitude of deflection of the cantilever. It was shown that the tip deflection of such a cantilever with a length of 5 mm and a width of 1 mmcan reach up to 7