Patent attributes
The present invention provides a piezoelectric transducer that includes at least two poled piezoelectric regions disposed in a side-by-side arrangement and connected in series with the poling directions reversed through the series connection, meaning that the “north pole” of one region is connected to the “south pole” of an adjacent region. The at least two regions can be within the same piece of piezoelectric material, or can be separate pieces of piezoelectric material. Transducers of the present invention may be particularly suited to detecting vibrations such as bending waves in a plate. For example, transducers of the present invention may be affixed to a surface of a plate and used to detect vibrations caused by or affected by touches to the plate to determine information related to the touches, such a touch position.
