Plate made of piezo material expand in the presence of an electric field E or if an electrical voltage is applied. The plate is covered on top and bottom faces with conductive material to form electrodes.

To generate displacement with low voltages, piezo plates are stacked and  connected electrically parallel.

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A preferred stack design of a ceramics multilayer device. The electric's layers cover the full surface of the piezo plates. There is also two external electrodes necessary to contact the multitude of "internal" electrical electrodes. Insulation is necessary between  All antipole electrodes are alternately insulated on the side faces. The unequal reciprocal internal electrodes and the two + and - external electrode strips, which provide parallel connection of all plots of the stack.  The preferrer method to do this is to realize small external insulation of the external layers and reciprocal internal electrode layers. This method has a fundamental advantage. The field in all the piezo material of a stack is ideally uniform and so there are no bent electrical field lines which would cause non-uniform mechanical stress. The lifetime of those devices is significantly increased.