• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Technology Engineers
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.756-760
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• 2011

This paper proposed an alignment stage driven by piezo actuators for alignment process of a contact-type lithography. Among contact-type lithography processes, an UV-curable nanoimprint process is an unique process to be able to align patterns on upper and lower layers. An alignment stage of the UV-curable nanoimprint process requires nano-level resolution as well as high stiffness to overcome friction force due to contact moving. In this paper, the alignment stage consists of a compliant mechanism using flexure hinges, piezo actuators for high force generation, and capacitive sensors for high-resolution measurement. The compliant mechanism is implemented by four prismatic-prismatic compliant chains for two degree-of-freedom translations. The compliant mechanism is composed of flexure hinges with high stiffness, and it is directly actuated by the piezo actuators which increases the stiffness of the mechanism, also. The performance of the ultra-precision stage is demonstrated by experiments.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.15 no.9
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• pp.881-886
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• 2009

This paper presents a manipulation system consisting of a coarse/fine XY positioning system and an out-of-plane manipulator. The object of the system is to conduct tine positioning and manipulation of micro parts. The fine stage and the out-of-plane manipulator have compliant mechanisms with flexure hinges, which are driven by stack-type piezoelectric elements. In the fine stage, the compliant mechanism plays the roles of motion guide and displacement amplification. The out-of-plane manipulator contains three piezo-driven compliant mechanisms for large working range and fine resolution. For large displacement, the compliant mechanism is implemented by a two-step displacement amplification mechanism. The compliant mechanisms are manufactured by wire electro-discharge machining for flexure hinges. Experiments demonstrate that the developed system is applicable to a fine positioning and fine manipulation of micro parts.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.30 no.12
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• pp.1281-1286
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• 2013

In this paper, a miniaturized stage with two prismatic-prismatic joints (2-PP) type parallel compliant mechanism driven by piezo actuators is proposed. This stage consists of two layers which are a motion guide layer and an actuation layer. The motion guide layer has 2-PP type parallel compliant mechanism to guide two translational motions, whereas the actuation layer has two leverage type amplification mechanisms and two piezo actuators to generate forces. Since the volume of the stage is too small to mount displacement sensors, the piezo actuators embedding strain gauge sensors are chosen. With the strain gauge-embedded piezo actuators, a semi-control is implemented, which results in hysteresis compensation of the stage. As the results, the operating range of $30{\mu}m$, the resolution of 20 nm, and the bandwidth of 400 Hz in each axis were obtained in the experiments.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.82 no.4
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• pp.503-515
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• 2022

The multi-rigid-body matrix method (MRBMM) is a generalized modeling method for obtaining the displacements, forces, and dynamic characteristics of a compliant mechanism without performing inner-force analysis. The method discretizes a compliant mechanism of any type into flexure hinges and rigid bodies by implementing a multi-body mass-spring model using coordinate transformations in a matrix form. However, in this method, the deformations of bodies that are assumed to be rigid are inherently omitted. Consequently, it may yield erroneous results in certain mechanisms. In this paper, we present a multi-compliant-body matrix-method (MCBMM) that considers a rigid body as a compliant element, while retaining the generalized framework of the MRBMM. In the MCBMM, a rigid body in the MRBMM is segmented into a certain number of body nodes and flexure hinges. The proposed method was verified using two examples: the first (an XY positioning stage) demonstrated that the MCBMM outperforms the MRBMM in estimating the static deformation and dynamic mode. In the second example (a bridge-type displacement amplification mechanism), the MCBMM estimated the displacement amplification ratio more accurately than several previously proposed modeling methods.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2003.04a
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• pp.1065-1068
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• 2003

The nano imprint process is one of the next generation lithography has been mentioned as one of major nanoreplication techniques because it is simple process, low cost, high replication fidelity and relatively high throughput. This process requires a surface contact between a template with patterns and a wafer on a stage. After contact, the vertical moving the template to the wafer causes some directional motions of the stage. Thus the stage must move according to the motions of the template to avoid the damage of the transferred patterns on the wafer. This study is to develop the wafer stage with a passive compliance to overcome the damage. This stage is designed with the concept like that it has a monolithic, symmetry and planar 6-DOF mechanism.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2006.10a
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• pp.671-672
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• 2006

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2013.05a
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• pp.583-584
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• 2013

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.24 no.12
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• pp.88-94
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• 2007

A flexure hinge-based compliant stage driven by stack-type piezoelectric elements has high precision motion but small operational range due to the characteristics of the piezoelectric element. Since the common flexure hinges can be broken by excessive deflection when the displacement is amplified by a high amplification ratio, a flexure hinge mechanism for large deflection is required. A cartwheel-type flexure hinge has an advantage of larger deflection compared with the common flexure hinges. This study presents a rotation stage with cartwheel-type flexure hinges driven by a stack-type piezoelectric element. The characteristics and the performance of the rotation stage are described by the terms of principal resonance frequency, amplification ratio of rotational displacement, maximum rotational displacement and block moment, in which the terms are analyzed by geometric parameters of the rotation stage. The analyzed results will be used as the guideline of the design of the rotation stage.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2008.06a
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• pp.575-576
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• 2008

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2013.05a
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• pp.389-390
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• 2013