New Design for Inertial Piezoelectric Motors

We have designed, implemented, and tested the performance details of a new type of piezoelectric motor called the CicadaDrive. It is a new motor design that the total friction force can be dramatically reduced or even canceled by pushing the clamping points at the ends of a piezoelectric tube in the opposite directions during piezoelectric deformation. While our new motor requires the addition of another piezoelectric tube, which leads to an increase in volume of 120% when compared with traditional inertial piezoelectric motors, we can realize far greater performance than two times, including step size, threshold voltage, stability, etc. Its highly integrated structure means that this motor is suitable for use as either a motor or a scanning unit.