Low voltage actuated plate for haptic applications with PZT thin-film

The tremendous development of tactile interface in many customers´ applications, such as smartphone, leads industrials to study “haptic interfaces” which allow the user to interact with its environment by the sense of touch. This paper reports on the development of a unique solution based on Pb(Zr_0.52,Ti_0.48)O₃ (PZT) thin-film actuated plates allowing the feeling of textured surfaces playing with the variable friction between a finger and the plate resonator induced by squeeze-film effect. Through a Finite Element Method (FEM) study, we designed high performances PZT actuator in order to obtain haptic compatible substrate displacement amplitude of about 1μm using actuation voltage lower than 10V. We used a generic technology to build demonstrators. Finally, we proved the concept through first promising electromechanical characterization results.