Effects of an elastic mass on frequency response characteristics of an ultra-thin piezoelectric micro-acoustic actuator

This paper presents an optimized method to improve the sound quality of ultra-thin piezoelectric micro-acoustic actuators. To achieve flat and smooth frequency response characteristics of the piezoelectric acoustic actuators, we have proposed an elastic mass attached to the acoustic diaphragm. The effects of the elastic mass on frequency response characteristics of the piezoelectric acoustic actuator were investigated by finite element analysis simulation and laser scanning vibrometer measurement. Based on the modal and vibrational characteristics, it was found that the fabricated piezoelectric acoustic actuator has a significant dip of 1.32 kHz and peak of 2.24 kHz, which correspond respectively to the (1,3) and (3,1) resonant modes of the acoustic diaphragm. However, by attaching an elastic mass to the acoustic diaphragm with a shape similar to the (3,1) mode, the resonant frequencies corresponding to the (1,3) and (3,1) modes shifted to higher frequencies and the vibrational displacements at each mode were dramatically reduced by about 40%. As a result, the dip at (1,3) mode was greatly improved by 13 dB and total harmonic distortion was dramatically reduced from 80.83% to 8.71%. This paper shows that the optimized elastic mass can allow flat and smooth frequency response characteristics by improving the significant peak and dip.