Development of a cross-scale 6-DOF piezoelectric stage and its application in assisted puncture

Micro-nano manipulation technology has been widely applied in ultra-precision fields such as micro-nano manufacturing and biomedical engineering. Multi-DOF ultra-precision stage is one of its key components. This study proposes a 6-DOF piezoelectric stage (6-DOF-PS) to solve the problem that few existing 6-DOF stages can take the characteristics of large range, high resolution and low coupling into account together. The optimal mechanism design scheme of the proposed stage was chosen by comprehensively considering three critical factors of the workspace, the parameter sensitivity of connecting rods and inertia load moment. The structure design and working principle of the 6-DOF-PS were introduced. A prototype of the 6-DOF-PS was fabricated and a series of experiments were performed. The experiment results showed that it achieved 6-DOF motion with the large range of 5 mm × 5 mm × 5 mm × 68° × 68° × 360° and the high resolution of 22.6 nm × 18.9 nm × 12.4 nm × 0.12 µrad × 0.13 µrad × 0.40 µrad, and the maximum coupling error was 5.03% in the 6-DOF motion. Therefore, 6-DOF motion with large range, high resolution and low coupling was achieved through this stage. Furthermore, it also had a good load carrying capacity. Finally, its application experiments in assisted puncture were carried out, the position and posture of the vascular models were adjusted by the 6-DOF motion, and the puncture operation was completed successfully with the assistance of the proposed 6-DOF-PS.