A Novel Design and Fabrication of V Type Valve Microactuator with PZT Prepared by Sol-Gel

A new microactuator design was fabricated to make a qualitative researcher on the PZT (Pb(Zr,Ti)O₃) piezoelectric thin film. A novel V type valve geometry structure enables fluid pumping. The PZT thin films were used to fabricate multi-layer driving membrane for microactuator by its piezoelectric response. As the key technology of driving membrane, the Si /SiO₂/Ti /Au /PZT/Cr/Au multi-layer film preparation on silicon substrate was developed. The microactuator consists of silicon-silicon stack and is fabricated with anisotropic etching process involving pump chamber and V type valve etching step. The SEM (scanning electron microscope) photographs of V type valve and XRD (X- ray diffraction) analysis for the multi-layer driving membrane were presented. The results show that the method of pump chamber fabricated is flat and uniform and the problem of PZT deposited on silicon substrate solved well. The single layer design of V type valve reduced the fabrication complexity and it satisfied the desires for materials retrenchment. Design and fabricated are described and discussed in this paper.