A Compact XY Flexure-Based Nanopositioning Stage for Scanning Probe Microscope (SPM)

Nanotechnology has been growing rapidly in most of the applications related to semi-conductor devices, health care, consumer goods, medicine and bio-technology. Nanopositioning systems are the sub-systems of nanotechnology equipments such as nanofabrication, nano-measurements and optical focusing systems. This paper is mainly focused on the development of compact XY flexure based mechanism for Scanning Probe Microscopes (SPM). The work includes design, manufacturing and testing of flexure based nanopositioning system. The developed nano-positioning stage is tested in open-loop operation for linearity and cross axis motions of the compliant mechanism. The sources of motion errors in a nanopositioning system include actuator non-linearity, creep, structural vibrations of flexure mechanism and thermal drift are minimized using closed loop operation. The compact XY system has been tested for dynamic motion and the measured bandwidth of the positioning system shows that it can be used for scanning probe microscope (SPM) application.