Global market for piezoelectric-operated actuators and motors to reach $16 billion by 2018

USA: Piezoelectric actuators and motors market is estimated to reach over $11 billion in 2013.

According to a recently published report from iRAP, Inc., ET119 - 'Piezoelectric Actuators and Motors - Types, Applications, New Developments, Industry Structure and Global Markets', the 2013 global market for piezoelectric operated actuators and motors was estimated to be $11.1 billion, and the maPiezoelectric Actuatorsrket is estimated to reach $16 billion by 2018, showing a CAGR of 7.7 percent per year.

A confluence of new piezo-based technology has breathed new capability into the nano- and micro-positioning world. Piezoelectric actuators convert electrical energy into a mechanical displacement or stress using a piezoelectric effect. Since piezoelectric elements have excellent responsiveness and conversion efficiency from electrical energy to mechanical energy, various types of piezoelectric actuators utilizing the piezoelectric effect of piezoelectric elements have been developed in recent years.

A piezoelectric actuator, which utilizes the piezoelectricity of crystal, has been used widely in a high precision positioning mechanism, since it can control a mechanical displacement at high speed. Piezoelectric actuators have the advantage of a high actuating precision and a fast reaction. Such actuators are components with a high electrical capacity, whereby only part of the electrical energy supplied to the actuators is converted to mechanical energy.

Piezoelectric actuators are widely used in the semiconductor and microelectronics industries, biology, optics, photonics, telecommunications, and metrology. Typical applications range from gene manipulation, vibration cancellation, fiber optic alignment, machine-tool alignment, and active damping, to hydraulic servo valves, shockwave generation, image stabilization, and wafer-mask alignment.

Piezoelectric actuators are developing into a large component market owing to high demand for ultra-small scale precision motion devices used in manufacturing and inspection equipment, high volume, low cost autofocus assemblies required in phone cameras, and high volume, moderate cost ink printing cartridges used in printers.

In addition, the demand for microactuator medical tools used in minimally invasive surgery and micro-grippers required in manufacturing microsized objects such as stents; as well as the demand for dynamically-driven, high temperature actuators for diesel injector valves in automobiles are pushing market growth and additional research and developments in the field.

This report also deals with ultrasonic motors (USMs) that belong to the class of piezoelectric motors. Due to their specific advantages compared to conventional electromagnetic motors, USMs fill a gap in certain actuator applications. A key advantage of USMs over electromagnetic motors is their compactness, i.e., their high stall torque-mass ratio and high torque at low rotational speed, often making speed-reducing gears superfluous.