National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology

Brother Kogyo Kabushiki-kaisha

Sou Baba

Jun Akedo

Motohiro Yasui

Hiroto Sugahara

Kazuo Kobayashi

Ryoji Funahashi

Masashi Mikami

Toshiyuki Mihara

A simple method is provided for manufacturing a film such as a piezoelectric film wherein the adhesiveness of the film on a substrate can be improved. An aerosol containing particles is ejected onto a substrate so that the particles adhere thereto, wherein the ratio between the Vickers hardness Hv(b) of the adhesion surface to which the particles are attached in the substrate, and the Vickers hardness Hv(p) of the particles is within a range of 0.39&#x2266;Hv(p)/Hv(b)&#x2266;3.08. The adhesiveness between the particles and the substrate can thereby be improved to reliably form a film. The present invention can be satisfactorily applied to the formation of a piezoelectric film.

Method for manufacturing film or piezoelectric film

The present invention provides a thermoelectric element in which a thin film of p-type thermoelectric material and a thin film of n-type thermoelectric material, which are formed on an electrically insulating substrate, are electrically connected, in which the p-type thermoelectric material and the n-type thermoelectric material are selected from specific complex oxides with a positive Seebeck coefficient and specific complex oxides with a negative Seebeck coefficient, respectively. The present invention also provides a thermoelectric module using the thermoelectric element(s) and a thermoelectric conversion method. In the thermoelectric element of the present invention, since a p-type thermoelectric material and an n-type thermoelectric material are formed into a thin film on an electrically insulating substrate, the thermoelectric element of the invention can be formed on substrates having various shapes, thereby providing thermoelectric elements having various shapes.

Thermoelectric conversion element and thermoelectric conversion module

A piezoelectric material layer is easily formed on a partial region of the substrate surface. By forming a different hardness material layer that has a different hardness from that of the substrate in the form of a pattern on the surface of the substrate, a film-deposition permitting region A to which particles of a piezoelectric material in a carrier gas adhere in a form of a film and a film-deposition inhibiting region B which inhibits the formation of a film are provided. Further, when a carrier gas containing particles of a piezoelectric material are ejected onto the surface of the substrate by means of AD, a film-like piezoelectric material layer is formed as a result of the adhesion of the particles in the film-deposition permitting region A. As a result, the piezoelectric material layer can be formed easily in a partial region of the surface of the substrate.

Piezoelectric actuator and method of fabricating piezoelectric actuator

Growing community of inventors

Tsukuba, Japan

Sou Baba