The paper describes the design, calibration, and characterization of a thrust stand capable of nano-Newton resolution. A low uncertainty calibration method is proposed and demonstrated. A passive eddy current based damper, which is non-contact and vacuum compatible, is employed. Signal analysis techniques are used to perform noise characterization, and potential sources are identified. Calibrat...

We present a rotating-tip-based mechanical nanomanufacturing technique, referred to here as nanomilling. An atomic force microscopy (AFM) probe tip that is rotated at high speeds by out-of-phase motions of the axes of a three-axis piezoelectric actuator is used as the nanotool. By circumventing the high-compliance AFM beam and directly attaching the tip onto the piezoelectric actuator, a high-s...

With widely application of nanomanipulation, the design requirements of nanomanipulation control system is higher and higher. To improve the control precision of nano-components, it is important to do research on closed-loop control method for nanomanipulation. The piezoelectric ceramic actuator has the inherent characteristic of hysteresis, creep and nonlinear. Attocube is adopted as piezoelec...

The possibility of constructing new high-performance electrostatic fast actuators based on energy transformation in nanometer gaps is considered. The construction and the properties of the operation of such devices as well as their typical parameters are described. The drives are based on ferroelectrics with high values of dielectric permittivity (above 1000). They can be constructed using micr...

Smart material actuators like Piezoelectric(PZT) are widely used in Micro/Nano manipulators, but their hysteresis behaviors are complex and difficult to model. Most hysteresis models are based on elementary quasistatic operators and are not suitable for modeling ratedependent or thermal-drift behaviors of the actuators. This work proposes a Preisach model based neurodynamic optimization model t...

Recently, in the development for piezoelectric and ferroelectric devices, the characterization method for nano-scale structure such as a ferroelectric domain and ferroelectric domain boundary (FeDB) has been important. The ultrasonic atomic force microscopy (UAFM) is expected to have the potential of elasticity characterization on the ferroelectric domain with nano-scale spatial resolution. In ...