Development of a low capacitance two-axis piezoelectric tilting mirror used for optical assisted micromanipulation

Abstract

A novel two-axis piezoelectric tilting mirror (PETM) was proposed for optical assisted micromanipulation, which avoided the shortcomings of high capacitance, relatively high cost and complex structure of general multi-axis steering mirrors using piezoelectric ceramic stack actuator. The developed PETM realized two-axis tilting motions via a simple bonded-type piezoelectric composite beam. The parametric sensitivity analyses of the tilting range and the fundamental frequency to the structural parameters were performed via FEM simulation, which facilitated serialization of the PETM. A tentative prototype was fabricated, and an experimental setup was built to carry out verification experiments. The preliminary characteristic tests including coupling motion, hysteresis and tilting motion resolution were accomplished to investigate its performances; the feasibility of closed-loop application of the PETM was confirmed by positioning and tracking experiments, which revealed its features of fast response, high positioning accuracy and feasible motion tracking capacity. Furthermore, the potential application of the PETM to manipulate laser beam in micromanipulation system was demonstrated preliminarily. In brief, the developed PETM realized low capacitance of 13.61 nF per axis to reduce the requirement for power amplifier. It can be a suitable device for optical assisted micromanipulation system by virtue of fast response, simple structure and extensible characteristics.