Concept and Evaluation of a New Piezoelectric Transducer for an Implantable Middle Ear Hearing Device

Autor: Houguang Liu, Jinlei Cheng, Jianhua Yang, Zhushi Rao, Gang Cheng, Shanguo Yang, Xinsheng Huang, Mengli Wang
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2017
Předmět:
Zdroj: Sensors, Vol 17, Iss 11, p 2515 (2017)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1424-8220
DOI: 10.3390/s17112515
Popis: Implantable middle ear hearing devices (IMEHDs) have been developed as a new technology to overcome the limitations of conventional hearing aids. The piezoelectric cantilever transducers currently used in the IMEHDs have the advantages of low power consumption and ease of fabrication, but generate less high-frequency output. To address this problem, we proposed and designed a new piezoelectric transducer based on a piezoelectric stack for the IMEHD. This new transducer, attached to the incus body with a coupling rod, stimulates the ossicular chain in response to the expansion-and-contraction of its piezoelectric stack. To test its feasibility for hearing loss compensation, a bench testing of the transducer prototype and a temporal bone experiment were conducted, respectively. Bench testing results showed that the new transducer did have a broad frequency bandwidth. Besides, the transducer was found to have a low total harmonic distortion (
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