A three-degree-of-freedom thin-film PZT-actuated microactuator with large out-of-plane displacement

A novel three degree-of-freedom microactuator based on thin-film lead-zirconate-titanate (PZT) is described with its detailed structural model. Its central rectangular-shaped mirror platform, also referred to as the stage, is actuated by four symmetric PZT bending legs such that each leg provides vertical translation for one corner of the stage. It has been developed to support real-time in vivo vertical cross-sectional imaging with a dual axes confocal endomicroscope for early cancer detection, having large displacements in three axes (z, θx, θy) and a relatively high bandwidth in the z-axis direction. Prototype microactuators closely meet the performance requirements for this application; in the out-of-plane (z-axis) direction, it has shown more than 177 μm of displacement and about 84 Hz of structural natural frequency, when two diagonal legs are actuated at 14V. With all four legs, another prototype of the same design with lighter stage mass has achieved more than 430 μm of out-of-plane displacement at 15V and about 200 Hz of bandwidth. The former design has shown approximately 6.4° and 2.9° of stage tilting about the x-axis and y-axis, respectively, at 14V. This paper also presents a modeling technique that uses experimental data to account for the effects of fabrication uncertainties in residual stress and structural dimensions. The presented model predicts the static motion of the stage within an average absolute error of 14.6 μm, which approaches the desired imaging resolution, 5 μm, and also reasonably anticipates the structural dynamic behavior of the stage. The refined model will support development of a future trajectory tracking controller for the system.