Development of planar parallel stage mechanism for nano order precision robot manipulator

This paper describes a tentative result on the way of developing nano-order precision robot to handle micro objects with under 10 nm resolution of positioning. For mechanism, we established the nano order precision robot manipulator stage with the workspace range to be 100 mum times 100 mum times 100 mum, and we proposed a conceptual design of 6 dof manipulator structure, 3 dof in plane motion and 3 dof out plane motion. Especially, for in plane motion, we proposed a 3-PPR planar parallel manipulator, which consists of three active prismatic joints, three passive prismatic joints, and three passive rotational joints. In this paper, we suggest 3 kinds of planar parallel driving stage with 2 or 3 dof for nano order robot manipulator. One of them was designed with the notch type 3ppr flexure hinge mechanism and the other was developed using 3ppr plate spring mechanism, and the last one was developed with 2 dimensional parallel linear spring mechanisms. As one of the construction result, we experimented the 2 dimensional parallel linear stage and obtained the resolution up to 3 nm that may be used as an alignment stage for nano order imprinting litho system that are now on developing in KIMM