A transparent polymeric flexure-hinge nanopositioner, actuated by a piezoelectric stack actuator

Nanopositioning using piezoelectric actuation and a flexure mechanism is one of most common methods for nanometre-scale positioning. Generally, flexure mechanism nanopositioners have been made from metal. Thus, their application to various environments needs careful consideration with regard to corrosion and circumference interference. In this study, we propose the concept of a chip-like polymeric flexure-based nanopositioner equipped with piezoelectric actuation. In its design, motion performance was predicted using finite element analysis of deformation and stress, and injection mouldability was considered through an injection moulding simulation to allow for fabrication by injection moulding. A cyclic olefin copolymer nanopositioner was fabricated using a mesoscale injection moulding process. Experiments demonstrated that the developed nanopositioner had a travel range of 15 μm with high linearity and it could be successfully controlled by a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) algorithm including a low-pass filter with a root mean square control error of 3 nm.