Design of a new type of piezoelectric actuator for middle ear implant

A piezoelectric stack actuator for incus driving type middle ear implant was proposed and designed.To aid the design,a coupled mechanical model between a human middle ear and a piezoelectric stack actuator was constructed.This model was built based on a complete set of computerized tomography section images of a healthy volunteer's left ear with reverse engineering technology.The result showed that the stapes footplate displacement stimulated with the designed piezoelectric stack actuator's excitation at 10.5 V rms is equivalent to that from acoustic stimulation at 90 dB SPL,adequate to the ossicular chain;the corresponding power consumption is 0.03 mW per volt of excitation at 1 kHz,low enough to meet the requirements of a middle ear implant.