Design and fabrication of a micro-compliant amplifier with a topology optimal compliant mechanism integrated with a piezoelectric microactuator

This study describes a new way of using a theory of ground structure parameterization of topology optimum and PZT microactuators to design a large force, compliant amplifier mechanism. The mechanism uses the PZT microactuator to be the input and utilizes the compliant mechanism to enhance the output displacement. This study uses a PZT microactuator of 3 mm length, 2 mm width and 0.5 mm thickness and analyzes the different performances of the microactuator when applied to different voltages, widths of beam and thicknesses. The study defines the compliant amplifier design domain as 4 mm × 5 mm with a 0.5 mm thickness, and discusses the effect of different optimization parameters. The driver is a PZT microactuator that can actuate approximately 6000 µN output force to the displacement amplifier. The average amplifier factor is 6.9 and consequently the device can generate about 15.2 µm output displacement when 20 V is applied.