Manufacturing process of piezoelectric thin-film dual-stage actuator and its reliability for HDD

A new dual-stage actuator for positioning a magnetic head for high-density hard disk drives was proposed and developed. This dual-stage actuator device is characterized by the sputter-deposited thin-film PZT, featuring large displacement of 1.2 [micro]m and high-resonance frequency over 15 kHz. In this paper, reliability against temperature, humidity, and mechanical shock was investigated to ensure the practical application to the drive products. Index Terms--Dual-stage actuator, magnetic disk drive, microactuator, piezoelectric actuator, PZT.