Silicon conveyor based planar electromagnetic device for linear displacement

In this work a planar electromagnetic motion device is presented for linear displacement. The motion forces are generated by the interaction between the currents in planar electrical drive coil, placed beneath the adjacently inverted magnets array with an insulating glass layer of 170 μm thickness in between. To achieve linear displacement in a plane, four adjacently inverted magnets arrays are assembled orthogonally to a micro-fabricated silicon cross structure and four planar electrical drive coils are assembled in an aluminum platform. The first prototype of this planar device is able to perform linear displacement in XY-plane with a positional repeatability error of 2.54 μm and 1.32 μm along X- and Y-axis respectively. The device is able to perform in free and self guided mode with a straightness error of 15.13 ± 5.64 μm and 3.02 ± 1.69 μm respectively.