PMN-PT piezoelectric material and related applications in Silicon-integrated devices like microactuators and energy harvesters

Most of the actual MEMS (Micro-ElectroMechanical Systems) are Silicon capacitive devices. The reported research provides the means for approaching towards novel concepts combining silicon technology with piezoelectric materials into Piezo-MEMS systems. The presented technology is based on the bonding and patterning of bulk PMN-PT piezoelectric material on a Silicon wafer rather than sputtering thin piezoelectric films (a complementary method generally providing worse piezoelectric propertie)s. On the other hand bulk piezoelectric materials are more suited for micromanipulation actuators or energy harvesters. The advantage of PMN-PT piezoelectric material with respect to the classical PZT ceramics is presented in the context of the latest works. The technology and some results for actuation and energy harvesting are depicted in the paper.