High-bandwidth nanopositioning via active control of system resonance

Abstract

Typically, the achievable positioning bandwidth for piezo-actuated nanopositioners is severely limited by the first, lightly-damped resonance. To overcome this issue, a variety of open- and closed-loop control techniques that commonly combine damping and tracking actions, have been reported in literature. However, in almost all these cases, the achievable closed-loop bandwidth is still limited by the original open-loop resonant frequency of the respective positioning axis. Shifting this resonance to a higher frequency would undoubtedly result in a wider bandwidth. However, such a shift typically entails a major mechanical redesign of the nanopositioner. The integral resonant control (IRC) has been reported earlier to demonstrate the significant performance enhancement, robustness to parameter uncertainty, gua-ranteed stability and design flexibility it affords. To further exploit the IRC scheme’s capabilities, this paper presents a method of actively shifting the resonant frequency of a nanopositioner’s axis, thereby delivering a wider closed-loop positioning bandwidth when controlled with the IRC scheme. The IRC damping control is augmented with a standard integral tracking controller to improve positioning accuracy. And both damping and tracking control parameters are analytically optimized to result in a Butterworth Filter mimicking pole-placement—maximally flat passband response. Experiments are conducted on a nanopositioner’s axis with an open-loop resonance at 508 Hz. It is shown that by employing the active resonance shifting, the closed-loop positioning bandwidth is increased from 73 to 576 Hz. Consequently, the root-mean-square tracking errors for a 100 Hz triangular trajectory are reduced by 93%.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

nanopositioning stage / high-bandwidth / resonant mode control / tracking control / integral resonant control

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