SUCCESS STORY – Drive Elements Made of Piezoelectric Materials -- Steffen Arnold -- Drive Elements Made of Piezoelectric Materials The Driving Force Behind Highly Accurate Dosing Applications PI Ceramic GmbH, Lindenstraße, 07589 Lederhose, Germany Phone +49 36604 882-0, Fax +49 36604 882-4109,Email [email protected]

SUCCESS STORY – Drive Elements Made of Piezoelectric Materials -- Steffen Arnold -- Demands on components increase with the advancing miniaturization in process and medical engineering. This particularly applies when small volumes have to be dosed with high precision, and also to aerosol applications or to production of microarrays or biochips. Piezo-based drive solutions are ideal here. Piezo drives generate linear motions directly and with high precision and have proven to be successful in many comparable applications. They can also be adapted well to the respective application environment....

SUCCESS STORY – Drive Elements Made of Piezoelectric Materials -- Steffen Arnold -- Highly dynamic disk-shaped piezo elements mounted directly onto a metal disc lend themselves as the drive system for the miniaturized versions of this type of pump (Fig. 3). High delivery rates can thus be realized even under backpressure by varying the switching frequencies or the amplitude of the piezo displacement by means of a corresponding control. Microdosing valves achieve flow rates of up to a few tens of liters per minute for highly accurate individual and bulk dosing in the microliter and nanoliter range....

SUCCESS STORY – Drive Elements Made of Piezoelectric Materials -- Steffen Arnold -- Peristaltic Pumps: Uniform and Pulse-Free Dosing So-called peristaltic pumps are ideal in cases where liquids or gases are to be dosed not only accurately, but also as evenly and with as little pulsing as possible. The external mechanical deformation of the tube forces the medium to be transported through this tube. The mechanical deformation is effected by piezo actuators (Fig. 5). Peristaltic pumps can be easily sterilized, are noncontact in operation, and can be operated without valves in both directions. The...

SUCCESS STORY – Drive Elements Made of Piezoelectric Materials -- Steffen Arnold -- Efficient Aerosol Production with Piezo Elements In medical engineering piezo actuators are often used in therapeutic devices. For the treatment of respiratory diseases often involves medication being directly applied with atomizers. Conventionally, pressurized air atomizes the inhalation solution into minute droplets. An alternative method is to generate minute droplets with the aid of piezo technology. Specially shaped piezo disks act as ultrasonic transducers here and excite a stainless-steel diaphragm with...

SUCCESS STORY – Drive Elements Made of Piezoelectric Materials -- Steffen Arnold -- Conclusion Piezo actuators have proven themselves as drive elements for pumping and dosing applications in medical and process engineering. They are maintenance-free, work with short response times and move with resolutions in the subnanometer range at high dynamics and frequencies of up to several thousands hertz. Piezoelectric drive solutions can be used for a large number of different systems and sometimes even allow new approaches to solutions. The corresponding drive electronics can also be perfectly matched...