Morgan Technical Ceramics (MTC) announced that its ElectroCeramics manufacturing site in Bedford, Ohio designs and manufactures a comprehensive range of precision piezoelectric ceramic components made of lead zirconate titanate (PZT) for use in aerospace, medical, industrial, commercial and consumer sensor and actuator applications. The company can produce intricate piezoelectric designs that meet demanding specifications for such products as transducers, sensors, actuators and bimorphs.
The manufacturing capability allows MTC to produce high volumes of complex and unique shapes with precise geometries that other technologies and processing techniques cannot achieve. This is particularly relevant for markets such as computer memory storage, which requires that the PZT element be made in volumes of millions per week with dimensional tolerances of +/- 50 microns, electrical tolerances of ± 15% and frequency tolerances of +/- 5% on a part that is miniature in size.
MTC has the latest high speed, tight tolerance manufacturing equipment available, allowing it to produce electrical patterns with via widths of 75 microns. Large volume, multi-chamber, high vacuum sputtering equipment can deposit nickel-chrome or aluminum seed layers with gold, silver or vanadium outer conduction layers. In addition, the company's laser ablation or photo etching processes can produce custom, precision electrode patterning.
High speed precision diamond dicing equipment is capable of producing very intricate parts with sizes as small as 0.5mm. This same equipment can be used to mechanically remove small amounts of PZT and electrode material to create array patterns or segmented PZT elements. This versatile equipment is routinely used to produce more than 3 million parts per week. These precision production methods can be used to produce components made with all of MTC's PZT ceramic materials, including PZT402, PZT5A3, PZT5H2, PZT801, PZT701 and PZT702.
According to business unit manager Gary Caprio, "Morgan Technical Ceramics' precision manufacturing processes and techniques have enabled many of our customers to create new products that could not have been produced using conventional shaping and electroding processes. We are leading the way in precision piezoceramic manufacturing and high volume production."