Optimal design of the lever displacement amplifiers for a flexure-based dual-mode motion stage

This paper presents the analytical modeling and optimal design of the flexure-based lever displacement (FBLD) amplifiers for a piezo-stage, which can be selected to drive at two different points on the stage. In order to overcome the effect of “displacement loss” of the FBLD amplifiers caused by the combination of the lever bending and the flexure stretching, the bearing modeling and analysis for the levers are conducted. Then, a series of optimal designs are carried out accordingly. Afterwards, mechanism modeling based on matrix method is implemented. Furthermore, the performance of the stage with the optimized amplification levers is evaluated by finite-element analysis (FEA). It indicates that the amplification ratio in two axes is about 4, thus the maximum workspace of the stage can reach up to around 341 μm × 341 μm without material failure, which makes the proposed dual-mode stage possess a good performance for the micro/nano manipulations with the requirements in different levels.