Ultrasonic motor

An ultrasonic motor is a type of electric motor powered by the ultrasonic vibration of a component, the stator, placed against another component, the rotor or slider depending on the scheme of operation (rotation or linear translation). Ultrasonic motors differ from piezoelectric actuators in several ways, though both typically use some form of piezoelectric material, most often lead zirconate titanate and occasionally lithium niobate or other single-crystal materials. The most obvious difference is the use of resonance to amplify the vibration of the stator in contact with the rotor in ultrasonic motors. Ultrasonic motors also offer arbitrarily large rotation or sliding distances, while piezoelectric actuators are limited by the static strain that may be induced in the piezoelectric element.

One common application of ultrasonic motors is in camera lenses where they are used to move lens elements as part of the auto-focus system. Ultrasonic motors replace the noisier and often slower micro-motor in this application.

Dry friction is often used in contact, and the ultrasonic vibration induced in the stator is used both to impart motion to the rotor and to modulate the frictional forces present at the interface. The friction modulation allows bulk motion of the rotor (i.e., for farther than one vibration cycle); without this modulation, ultrasonic motors would fail to operate.

Two different ways are generally available to control the friction along the stator-rotor contact interface, traveling-wave vibration and standing-wave vibration. Some of the earliest versions of practical motors in the 1970s, by Sashida, for example, used standing-wave vibration in combination with fins placed at an angle to the contact surface to form a motor, albeit one that rotated in a single direction. Later designs by Sashida and researchers at Matsushita, ALPS, and Canon made use of traveling-wave vibration to obtain bi-directional motion, and found that this arrangement offered better efficiency and less contact interface wear. An exceptionally high-torque 'hybrid transducer' ultrasonic motor uses circumferentially-poled and axially-poled piezoelectric elements together to combine axial and torsional vibration along the contact interface, representing a driving technique that lies somewhere between the standing and traveling-wave driving methods.

...
Wikipedia