Haptic Interface Based on an Innovative "Piezo-in-Flex" Piezoelectric Patch Technology

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. Piezoelectric actuators are commonly used to actuate such interfaces. In this paper, we present a new and innovative technology to integrate collectively commercial piezoceramics into flexible piezoelectric patches able to be integrated on any surface. The "piezo-in-flex" technology include the control of the piezoelectric actuator thickness through a grinding step. Piezoelectric actuator in the 10 – 100 µm range can be obtained in order to develop high performance and low consumption haptic interfaces. We glue the piezoelectric flexible patch on a 4×3 cm ² glass plate to obtain a plug and play haptic interface. A displacement amplitude of 1.15 µm was measured on a Lamb mode at 58.49 kHz, using only 25 V. A haptic effect was felt by the finger when we modulate at 50 Hz the actuation signal, proving the potential of our "piezo-in-flex" haptic interface.