Development and control of a three-axis nanopositioner

摘要

We report the development and control of a three-axis nanopositioner with motion amplification. The nanopositioner employs parallel kinematics for in-plane motion and serial kinematics for out-of-plane motion. The designed stage was fabricated using electrical discharge machining. High-voltage electronics were developed to actuate the nanopositioner. A capacitive sensor with associated signal conditioning circuitry was also developed and calibrated in-house to measure the resulting motion. Characterization of the nanopositioner using the developed electronics revealed ranges of 30im, 50im and 50im along X-, Y- and Z-axes. The hysteresis in motion was characterized to be about 14%. In order to minimize the hysteresis, a feedback control system was developed based on the measurements made by the capacitive sensor. The control system was demonstrated to suppress hysteresis to merely 0.09%, or equivalently, by a factor of 200.