A Linear Ultrasonic Motor for Nano-technology

In response to rising demand for high performance actuators to serve nano-technology, a linear ultrasonic motor was designed and constructed to verify its potential as a viable nano-actuator. After establishing the analytical model that elucidates the physics of the ultrasonic motor operation, experimental performance tests were conducted in a fully digital controlled real-time control environment. This newly developed system fuses flexible user interface with high speed data acquisition and manipulation ability by incorporating a powerful DSP board into the PC based operating kernel. The experiments demonstrate ultrasonic motor's excellent potential as a nano-actuator that will drive tomorrow's high performance devices. Extremely high speed motion capability was achieved without sacrificing either the sub-nanometer positioning accuracy, high bandwidth, high static stiffness, or high torque to weight ratio. These performance advantages over other nano-actuators stem from effective design that couples superior material property of piezoelectric material with a simple structure, and allows direct friction contact between the motor and the linear guide. Thesis Supervisor: Kamal Youcef-Toumi Title: Associate Professor