Design, modeling and testing of a 3-DOF flexible piezoelectric thin sheet nanopositioner

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel 3-DOF (degree-of-freedom) flexible nanopositioner constructed from unimorph piezoelectric actuators and compliant flexures, featured with a compact size, low-cost and large stroke design, which is significantly different from the typical piezo-stack driven micro/nano-stages and the existing thin sheet nanopositioners. The model of the flexible nanopositioner is established by the compliance matrix method, which can be used to analyze the relationship between the structural parameters and system output characteristics and dynamical properties. Meanwhile, the modeling and analysis approach provides a guidance of geometry optimization of the proposed piezoelectric nanopositioners and paves the road for control of such systems. Furthermore, a real-time experimental apparatus with two PSDs (position sensitive detectors) is also proposed and fabricated to validate the static and dynamic characteristics of the flexible piezoelectric thin sheet (PZT-5A) nanopositioner, where comprehensive experiments are deployed demonstrating good agreement between theoretical results and experiments.