High speed nano positioning systems

At the University of Nevada, Associate Professor Kam K. Leang is designing high speed nano positioning systems for research purposes with Noliac actuators. Kam's nanopositioners have ranges up to 60 micrometers and dominant mechanical resonances as high as 130 kHz.

Good mechanical properties and low capacitance

Kam K. Leang has known and used Noliac actuators for several years and states:  

- Noliac piezo stack actuator is the most high performance actuator available for micro and nano scale applications. We use Noliac stack actuators in the design of our high speed nano positioning systems because of their good mechanical properties and relatively low capacitance.

- A major disadvantage of scanning probe microscopy is the slow speed of image acquisition, typically less than one image per minute. We have found three techniques that can be used to increase the speed of a conventional scanning probe microscope by greater than one hundred times. This is achieved by the combination of high-speed vertical positioning, sinusoidal scanning, and high-speed image acquisition. These techniques are simple, low-cost, and can be applied to many conventional microscopes without significant modification. 

More about Kam K. Leang's high speed nano positioning systems:

Nano positioners

Kam K. Leang