Development of a Miniature Hemispherical Tilt Stage Using Piezoelectric Actuators

—First Report : Design, Fabrication and Evaluation of Micro Tilt—

Abstract

Observation and manipulation technology under scanning electron microscopes (SEM) is required in medicine, biology and mechatronics. A miniature hemispherical tilt stage has been proposed for improvement of microscopic observation and manipulation. The stage can be rotated in arbitrary direction under the SEM. The stage is composed of a hemisphere and three drive units. Furthermore, the drive unit is composed of a drive ball and two piezoelectric actuators. The drive ball is moved by two piezoelectric actuators, which are orthogonally arranged, in a plane. The ball moving plane of each hold ball is same as the tangent plane between the hemisphere and each hold ball. The hemisphere on three hold balls is tilted and rotated in arbitrary direction by stick-slip motion of each hold ball. The tilted or rotated direction of the stage can be controlled by the movable directions of each hold ball. In this paper, design and fabrication of the miniature hemispherical tilt stage is described. Then, the tilted directions and linearity of the stage are evaluated by a laser autocollimator in the micro-tilt experiments.