Design and characteristic analysis of an aerostatic decoupling table for microelectronic packaging

This paper presents a novel 2-DOF XY table with high-precision positioning to improve the efficiency and precision of micro-electro-mechanical system packaging. The XY table, which is supported by aerostatic bearings to realize high-precision positioning motion, is directly driven by two linear voice coil actuators. The motion decoupling between the X-and Y-axes is realized through a novel aerostatic decoupling mechanism, by which the mass and inertia of motion parts are reduced significantly. The mechanical structure of the XY table is designed and the decoupling mechanism is studied. Based on the Navier–Stokes equation, the influences of orifice diameter and lubrication gap on the carrying capacity as well the static stiffness of the aerostatic bearings are analyzed. The parameters of the aerostatic bearings are determined by single factor method. Using the finite element method, the static, modal, and transient analyses of the developed positioning table are carried out to investigate the characteristics of the positioning table. The results show that the positioning table provides good performance and can also provide important information for the optimization design and control of this kind of the positioning table.