(A) three-axis nanopositioning slider design, analysis and control

Abstract

A positioning device with both long moving range(mm order) and nanometer resolution is more and more required in many surface inspection devices such as scanning probe microscope (SPM), scanning tunneling microscope (STM), Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) as a sample stage. These surface inspection devices can scan the sample surface with high resolution(maximum to the atomic lattice distance) and quality, whereas the field of view is small (ordinarily ㎛ order). And recently the micro- or nano-manipulation in the MEMS (MicroElctro Mechanical Systems) and biotechnology fields. In that manipulator applications the master-slave concept is used just as in the robotics and using the master a human handle the slave which is nanopositioner in this case with monitoring the process by human eye. In these applications the open loop without position sensor characteristic is important because the undesirable effects can occur in the micro- and nano-positioning mechanism such as back-lash, different character according to the movement direction, degeneration of performance according to many operations and even no movement in some cases randomly. The stage requirements for these applications are high resolution, multi-axis movements, high positioning stability, compact and simple structure. Furthermore, with the standardization of the surface scanning devices there is also a need for metrological sample stage. And as mentioned above the desirable open loop character is needed in some application. Among these requirements, positioning stability and compact structure is critical for high resolution scanning applications. A positioning stability means that the degree of sample``s ability to hold its position during the scan and ideally no movements of the sample is required. In this thesis a metrological multi-axis nanopositioning device is developed which is operated in two ways, inertial sliding method and stick phase control method, with three laser interferometers as...