Characteristics and Fabrication of Multi-Layered Piezoelectric Ceramic Actuators for Speaker Application

Piezoelectric thick films of soft $Pb(Zr,Ti)O_3$ (PZT) based commercial material (S55) were fabricated using a conventional tape casting method. Ag-Pd electrodes were printed on the piezoelectric film at room temperature and all 5 layered films with a dimension of $12mm{\times}16mm$ were successfully laminated for a multi-layered piezoelectric ceramic actuator. The laminated specimens were co-fired at $1,100^{\circ}C$ for 1 h. A flat layered and dense microstructure was obtained for the $112{\mu}m$ thick piezoelectric actuator after sintering process. Thereafter, a prototype piezoelectric speaker was fabricated using the multi-layered piezoelectric ceramic actuator which can operate as a bimorph. Its SPL (sound pressure level) characteristic was also evaluated for speaker application. Frequency response revealed that the output SPL with a root mean square voltage of 10 V increased gradually to the highest peak of 87.5 dB for 1.5 kHz and exhibited a relatively stable behavior over the measured frequency range (${\leq}20kHz$) at a distance of 10 cm, implying that the fabricated piezoelectric speaker is potential for speaker applications.