Abstract
In this research, a low voltage XY positioning stage is designed to achieve a desired scanning range of 10 µm × 10 µm using a piezo ceramic disk as the actuator. The purpose of using this type of actuator instead of a piezo stack is because of its low cost and low driving voltage (10 V to 30 V), which is also to develop a low cost micro/nano positioning stage. The positioning stage is assembled using two steppers wherein one stepper has components such as a piezo ceramic disk, a quartz z-beam (z-shaped beam quartz) as cantilever, and a blade as hinge. The mechanism used in the stepper is a lever mechanism to magnify the moving distance of the driving side (piezo ceramic disk). We discovered the moving distance of the driving side did not magnify according to the lever magnification effect. To understand the cause, experiment data, ANSYS simulation, and computational results were compared and analyzed to identify that bending occurred on the z-beam causing the small moving distance. A schematic of the bending shape of the z-beam was shown using the deflection equation, and with Matlab, by plotting the computed deflection value at every point on the z-beam. The relationship of the lever magnification effect and the bending effect was also shown and is in correlation with the experiment data. After the problem was identified, using the best ratio (2:3) of this experiment, we achieved a moving distance of about 12 µm × 12 µm with 12 piezo disk actuators. As a result of gathering the data of moving distance versus voltage, we can identify what driving voltage to apply to achieve a desired moving distance.