Deflection performance of a bi-directional distributed polymeric piezoelectric micromotor

Distributed piezoelectric micromotor architectures have great potential because they combine the advantages of piezoelectric micromotors with the advantages of distributed architectures. However, to use a distributed architecture paradigm for piezoelectric micromotors, a basic motor building block is needed. To meet this need a piezoelectric micromotor building block, called a C-block, was developed. These C-blocks can be combined together in a variety of distributed architectures to expand their capabilities. This paper introduces a basic polymeric piezoelectric C-block micromotor design and a serial C-block micromotor architecture that demonstrates increased deflection capabilities. For both micromotor designs, simple manufacturing steps are described and analytical deflection models are presented. These micromotors were experimentally tested with prototypes ranging in size from a few millimeters to a few centimeters in scale. Results for an individual C-block micromotor and a serial C-block micromotor are presented. These results demonstrate the accuracy of the models and the feasibility of designing and fabricating polymeric piezoelectric micromotor architectures.