A miniaturized nano-motion stage driven by piezo stacks

This paper presents the design and analysis of a miniaturized nano-motion stage which is driven by piezo stacks. The piezo-driven stage manufactured by the conventional machining is limited to decrease its size due to the size of conventional piezo stack and the characteristics of the machining. In this paper, the proposed stage consists of three layers to minimize the size of the stage within 40 mm times 40 mm in xy-plane. The top layer contains two-axis guide mechanism with flexural prismatic joints, the middle layer consists of lever-arm mechanisms for displacement amplification and stack-type piezo actuators for actuation, and the base layer is a base frame for fixing the above two layer. Since the conventional displacement sensors are not enough to mount in the stage mechanism due to their large volume, the piezo stacks containing strain gauges are used to control the motion of the stage. The top layer and the middle layer are machined by wire electro discharge machining. Experiments demonstrate the performance of the miniaturized nano-motion stage.