Effect of grain sizes on piezoelectric properties of multilayer thick film actuators

Abstract A unique piezoelectric multilayer thick film actuator for computer hard disk drives has been designed and fabricated using the screen printing technology. Dielectric and piezoelectric properties of such PZT thick film actuators with grain sizes ranging from 0.8 to 3.0 μm have been investigated. Under an applied electric voltage of 6V. displacement values of 0.25 μm, 0.44 μm, and 0.55 μm and corresponding resonance frequencies of 58.0 kHz, 61.4 kHz, and 65.6 kHz are obtained in those PZT multilayer actuators with grain sizes of 0.8 μm, 1.3 μm, and 3.0 μm, respectively. The correlation between processing parameters with grain sizes and piezoelectric properties is discussed.