Abstract
In this paper, a fast automatic precision approaching system is developed for electrochemical nanofabrication using visual and force-displacement sensing. Before the substrate is fabricated, the template should approach the substrate accurately to establish the initial gap between the template and substrate. During the approaching process, the template is first quickly moved towards the substrate by the stepping motor until a specified gap is detected by the visual feedback. Then, the successive approach using the switch of macro-micro motion with a force-displacement sensing module is triggered to make the template contact with the substrate to nanometre accuracy. The contact force is measured by the force-displacement sensing module which employs the high-resolution capacitive displacement sensor and flexure compliant mechanism. The high sensitivity of this capacitive displacement sensor ensures high accuracy of the template-substrate contact. The experimental results show that the template can reach the substrate accurately and smoothly, which verifies the effectiveness of the proposed approaching system with the visual and the force-displacement sensing modules.
Highlights
Various electrochemical nanofabrication methods [1,2,3] are widely developed to fabricate nano-metric structure due to their important advantages of high efficiency, feasibility for large areas, high resolution, and direct processability of solutions [4]
An automatic approaching system is presented for electrochemical nanofabrication with a visual sensing and a force-displacement sensing modules
The approaching process can be divided into two phases: the fast approach and the successive approach
Summary
Various electrochemical nanofabrication methods [1,2,3] are widely developed to fabricate nano-metric structure due to their important advantages of high efficiency, feasibility for large areas, high resolution, and direct processability of solutions [4]. In the various electrochemical nanofabrication processes, the most important problems which limit their extensive use are the fine determination and adjustment of the distance between the template and the substrate. The nanopositioning stages equipped with the piezoelectric actuators and the capacitive displacement sensors have been developed to realize the fine adjustment of the gap distance [5], the fine control of the template-substrate distance is still a pendent problem due to the difficulty of accurate template-substrate contact detection [4]. It is important to make the template-substrate contact to nanometer accuracy and determine the initial gap and the zero point accurately before the substrate is fabricated. A lock-in technique that uses force modulation [6] and lock-in amplifier [7] is employed to establish the template-substrate contact to nanometer accuracy
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