Simultaneous sensing and actuation with a piezoelectric tube scanner

Piezoelectric tube scanners with quartered external electrodes are the most widely used nanopositioning technology in modern scanning probe microscopes. There has been increasing interest in utilizing feedback control techniques to improve bandwidth and accuracy of these nanopositioners. The use of feedback requires a sensor to be incorporated into the nanopositioning device. Noncontact displacement sensors, e.g., capacitive and inductive sensors, have been used for this purpose. However, their measurements contain a significant noise component if operated over large bandwidths. The piezoelectric voltage induced in a tube nanopositioner has been proposed recently as an alternative measure of displacement with a much improved noise figure, up to three orders of magnitude better than capacitive sensors. In this arrangement, an electrode is used to actuate the tube, while the opposite electrode is used as a sensor. This approach has two drawbacks: (i) the operating range of the tube is reduced to half and (ii) the tube is not driven symmetrically, thus the opposite sides of the tube experience asymmetric stresses, i.e., in this mode of operation, the scanner is not a perfectly collocated system. In this paper, we present a new electrode pattern for piezoelectric tube scanners which addresses the above problems and allows simultaneous sensing and actuation of the tube in an efficient way.