Design of a Large Range XY Nanopositioning System

Abstract

Achieving large motion range (>1 mm) along with nanometric motion quality (<10 nm) simultaneously has been a key challenge in nanopositioning systems. Practical limitations associated with the individual physical components (bearing, actuators, and sensors) and their integration, particularly in the case of multi-axis systems, have restricted the range of currently available nanopositioning systems to approximately 100 μm per axis. This paper presents a novel physical system layout, comprising a bearing, actuators, and sensors, that enables large range XY nanopositioning. The bearing is based on a parallel-kinematic XY flexure mechanism that provides a high degree of geometric decoupling between the two motion axes by avoiding geometric over-constraint, provides actuator isolation that allows the use of large-stroke single-axis actuators, and enables a complementary end-point sensing scheme using commonly available sensors. These attributes help achieve 10 mm × 10 mm motion range in the proposed nanopositioning system. Having overcome the physical system design challenges, a dynamic model of the proposed nanopositioning system is created and verified via system identification. In particular, dynamic nonlinearities associated with the large displacements of the flexure mechanism and resulting controls challenges are identified. The physical system is fabricated, assembled, and tested to validate its simultaneous large range and nanometric motion capabilities. Preliminary closed-loop test results, which highlight the potential as well as pending challenges associated with this new design configuration, are presented.

Design and Development of a Compact Flexure-Based $XY$ Precision Positioning System With Centimeter Range

“…In previous works, several designs have been proposed to tackle these issues. For instance, the compound parallelogram flexures (CPFs) were employed to design compliant XY stages with centimeter ranges [31], [35]. More recently, the new concept of multistage CPF (MCPF) was reported in [32] to achieve a larger pure translational motion.…”

“…The reason lies in that the two criteria are conflicting conditions indeed. To accomplish a large motion range, slender leaf flexures are usually employed [28], [29], [31], [32]. Intuitively, a longer stroke can be realized by using a narrower and longer leaf flexure.…”

“…For instance, micropositioning stages with millimeter ranges were reported in [28]- [30], which were 0278-0046 © 2013 IEEE driven by electromagnetic actuators. Several VCM-driven positioning stages with centimeter ranges were developed in [31] and [32]. As compared with PSA, VCM is capable of delivering a centimeter-level stroke along with a fine resolution [33], [34].…”

Hybrid flexure-based multi-level mechanism design supporting centimeter stroke nano manipulator

“…Alternatively VCA driven beam flexure-based stage design is able to achieve both large stroke (> 1 mm) and nano scale tracking accuracy (10 nm). Awtar and co-workers conducted pioneering works in this direction (see references [1], [10]), where they proposed some motivating design concepts based on beam flexures actuated by VCAs.…”

Design and optimization of a long-stroke compliant micropositioning stage driven by voice coil motor

“…In the literature, a flexure-based large-stroke stage generally comes at the sacrifice of physical dimension [13]. Moreover, most of existing micropositiong stages achieves a long stroke by making use of ball-screw driving mechanism.…”