Nanopositioning controller for piezo stages boasts 270-W peak power, nanometer-level precision

A high-power version of PI’s (Physik Instrumente) E-727 family of multi-axis piezo nanopositioning controllers provides 270 W of peak power – close to 10X of the standard version. The enhanced performance is useful for dynamic, nanometer-level precision motion and positioning applications, such as FSM (fast steering mirrors) in free space optical communication and laser material processing, and scanning stages for super-resolution microscopy, semiconductor manufacturing, automated photonics alignment or high-speed tracking applications. The E-727 high-speed digital servo allows for precision in the nanometer and sub-nanometer range with extremely fast settling in the millisecond range.

Advanced digital servo
The E-727 nanopositioning controller features an advanced digital servo providing significant advantages compared to conventional analog piezo nanopositioning controllers. Digital filters provide better linearity and higher bandwidth as well as on-the-fly parameter adaptation to changed loads or production requirements. Software-adjustable notch filters allow users to make full use of their piezo-mechanisms by suppressing mechanical resonances and yielding higher throughput and reducing step-and-settle times to milliseconds.

Other advanced features of the digital piezo nanopositioning controller include 4th-order polynomial linearization for both the piezo mechanisms and the electronics, an integrated data recorder, an ID chip for fast and quick exchange of the system components, as well as subordinate, programmable drift compensation. The dynamic performance can be further enhanced by a dynamic digital linearization (DDL) option. DDL reduces trajectory errors to an indiscernible level in the case of dynamic-periodic applications. This can improve the accuracy of high-speed scanning operations by several orders of magnitude, down to nanometer levels.

Interfaces and Software
The E-727 nanopositioning controller comes with USB, Ethernet, and even high-resolution 20-bit analog control interfaces. Like all PI motion controllers, it’s supported by LabVIEW drivers and dynamic libraries for Windows and Linux. An SPI interface provides high-speed serial data transmission.

For more information, visit www.pi-usa.us/en.