Design and verification of a single-end 3-DOF piezoelectric micromanipulator for micro-object posture manipulations

Piezoelectric micromanipulator has become one of the most representative micromanipulators by means of some obvious merits, including fast response, high resolution, good electromagnetic compatibility, etc. Most existing piezoelectric micromanipulators mainly use piezoelectric stacks or bonded actuators as driving units, facing great challenges in achieving multi-DOF and large-range operations. It requires multiple driving units, as well as complex excitation signals and structural configurations. To address these problems, a single-end 3-DOF piezoelectric micromanipulator driven by ring-shaped multi-zone piezoelectric ceramics is designed in this work. The lateral and longitudinal motion characteristics of the micromanipulator are calculated and estimated via simulations, and a series of experiments are carried out to evaluate its vibration, displacement and force characteristics. The designed micromanipulator achieves 3-DOF orthogonal motions in X-axis, Y-axis and Z-axis with maximum manipulation displacement of 88.42 μm, optimal displacement resolution of 31.19 nm, maximum operating force of 4.85 mN and the optimal force resolution of 18.97 μN. Finally, the micromanipulation experiments fully verify its application potential in the micro-object posture manipulation. It also holds promising application prospects in robot-assisted micromanipulation, micromachining, and micro assembly.