Fundamentals and applications of piezoelectric MEMS

Abstract

Recently, piezoelectric MEMS have attracted a considerable amount of attention because of their excellent electro-mechanical conversion efficiency on the micro-scale. Piezoelectric MEMS are a combined technology of a ferroelectric thin film and MEMS, and inkjet printer heads and gyro sensors using PZT thin films have been commercialized for about ten years. Thanks to the progress of the deposition process as well as the evaluation methods of piezoelectric thin films, the range of applications of piezoelectric MEMS has expanded with the improvement of the piezoelectric properties of the thin films. In this article, I introduce the core technologies of the piezoelectric MEMS as well as their future trends.