Tsunemasa Saiki, Yukako Takizawa, Takahiro Kaneyoshi, Kenji Iimura, Michitaka Suzuki, Akinobu Yamaguchi, Yuichi Utsumi
Sensors and Materials 33(x) 1-1 2021年3月8日 査読有り
We fabricated a surface acoustic wave (SAW) actuator by patterning an interdigital transducer (IDT) made of Al film on a LiNbO3 substrate and investigated its transport characteristics with powders of spherical copper, spherical glass, spherical polyethylene, and angular alumina particles with sizes of about 100 μm. The IDT had a 2 mm pitch size, 10 mm aperture, and 10 stripline pairs. It was found that the glass, polyethylene, and alumina powders that could not be transported when the actuator was horizontal could be transported by tilting the actuator, i.e., the powder transport path. It was also found that the powder movement response times with SAWs were shorter than 50 ms when the actuator, tilted at suitable angles of 0°, 6°, 15°, and 26°, transported the copper, glass, polyethylene, and alumina powders, respectively. Then, we fabricated miniature feeders by mounting hoppers on SAW actuators tilted at the above angles and investigated their powder feed characteristics. It was found that, when the feeders were driven for 50 ms at an electric power of 1 W, the fed weights of the copper and glass powders, which did not have flowability problems, were 2.3 and 0.9 mg, respectively.