Design and Analysis of 5-DOF Micro/nano-Positioning Stage

This paper provided a design method for configuration synthesis of micro/nano-positioning stage with bridge-type mechanism based on graph theory. The structural characteristics of stage were discussed first. Then, these modules made up of micro/nano-positioning stage were abstracted. Thus the stage could be described with a tree-graph. According to the spanning tree theory, several possible configurations of stage were enumerated correspondingly. Subsequently, the configuration synthesis of six bridge-type mechanisms was investigated and 720 results were obtained. Rules for generating structures with symmetry were established. On the basis of this, several innovative structures were presented, and one example was chosen for further analysis. The performance of the selected stage was confirmed by finite element analysis (FEA), and a prototype of the selected stage was fabricated for performance tests. Both FEA simulation and experimental studies well validate the performance of the selected stage that is expected to be adopted in micro/nano-positioning stage. Furthermore, the result of this paper provides a practicable approach for the structural design of stage and the design method based on graph theory is effective.