High precision ceramic parts manufacturing capability

15 November 2011

Thanks to recent investment in new manufacturing equipment, Morgan Technical Ceramics (MTC) can now produce precision piezoelectric components to extremely tight tolerances and in high volumes of more than three million parts per week. The company has the capability to manufacture high quality parts that offer exceptional performance for transducers, sensors actuators and bimorphs used in industrial applications.

MTC can 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 lead zirconate titanate (PZT) elements are made in high 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.

The company has the latest manufacturing equipment available, enabling it to produce electrical patterns with via widths of 75 microns. Its large volume, multi-chamber, high vacuum sputtering equipment can deposit nickel-chrome or aluminium seed layers with gold, silver or vanadium outer conduction layers. In addition, the laser ablation or photo etching processes can produce custom, precision electrode patterning repeatedly.

High speed precision diamond dicing equipment is capable of producing intricate parts with lengths 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. 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.