US 5,299,739 AGranted

Ultrasonic wave nebulizer

AssigneeTDK Corporation

InventorsMinoru Takahashi, Makoto Ono

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Abstract

An ultrasonic wave nebulizer for converting water or liquid to mist has a disc-shaped piezoelectric vibrator (1) which has a pair of surfaces one of which is defined as an operation surface. A mesh (3) is located close to said operation surface so that a gap (G) or a thin water or liquid film is defined between the mesh and the operation surface. The gap spacing is smaller than the diameter of water drop which is composed by surface tension of water when no mesh were located. Upon excitation of the vibrator with high frequency, the water film is converted to mist. Fresh water is supplied in said gap spacing through capillarity. The exciting frequency is almost the same as the resonant frequency of the vibrator. The present nebulizer is useful for a small atomizer which operates with small power consumption.

Claims20

Dependent claims

An ultrasonic wave nebulizer comprising;

a piezoelectric vibrator (1) having first and second surfaces, a pair of electrodes (2A, 2B), one of said electrodes being mounted on each of said surfaces of the vibrator, and one of said surfaces defining an operation surface (2A),
a holder (4, 5) for holding said vibrator (1),
a mesh (3) having at least a portion located close to said operation surface so that an essential gap space (G) is provided between said portion of the mesh and the operation surface of the vibrator, and a thin liquid film being provided in said gap space through capillarity,
means (7) for supplying liquid to said gap space to provide said thin liquid film,
a high frequency generator (FIG. 5),
connecting means (6) for connecting said generator to said electrodes of the vibrator,
said vibrator vibrating in thickness direction of the vibrator upon being excited with high frequency power between said electrodes to convert said thin liquid film to mist.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.