Piezoelectric ceramic has been widely applied in many fields because of its characteristics, and the performance of piezoelectric ceramic is determined strongly by its driver. In this study, an approach to analyzing the stability of a piezoelectric ceramic driver with an emitter follower stage was presented, and a compensation was proposed. First of all, using the method of modified nodal analysis and loop gain analysis, the transfer function for the feedback network was analytically deduced, and the cause of the instability of the driver was found to be the pole composed of the effective capacitance from the piezoelectric ceramic and the transconductance from the emitter follower. Then, a compensation involving a novel delta topology composed of an isolation resistor and a second feedback path was proposed, and its function principle was discussed. Simulations showed a correspondence between the analysis and the effectiveness of the compensation. Finally, an experiment was set up with two prototypes, one with compensation, and the other without compensation. Measurements showed the elimination of oscillation in the compensated driver.
Keywords: driver; emitter follower; piezoelectric ceramic; stability compensation.