Design of a Compliant Micromechanism for Optical-Fiber Alignment

The optical-fiber alignment system is a critical role on micro/nano precision engineering. In this paper, the design and fabrication of a novel, six-axis compliant nano-stage which uses flexure hinge and negative Poisson’s Ratio is presented. Every single axis is a designed planar geometry, so it is easily fabricated via laser cutting processes that enable cost down to achieve batch products. The material of six-axis mechanism is aluminum. The micromechanism consists of six trapeziform displacement structures and two hexagonal plates which are on the top and bottom. The displacement structures includes of a signal layer flexure hinge toggle mechanism stage and asymmetrical multi-layer flexure hinge toggle mechanism stage. The computer simulation of the transferring behavior was performed with a commercial package, named SolidWorks ANSYS@. The model states of stress, strain and the displacement of ratio can be estimated. The experiment was carried out with Piezoelectric(PZT) actuators and LVDT which drives and measures the displacement. Comparison of the simulation and experimental result between the single-axis and six-axis stage are presented. The results shown that the displacement of ratio is 32 times as the single-axis structures. The system maximum displacement of vertical translation, horizontal translation, tilt angle and rotational angle is 50 µm, 50 µm, 0.5° and 0.5°. In experimental, the results not only demonstrate that this micromechanism of flexure hinge and negative Poisson’s Ratio increases the displacement of ratio and reduces the size of system, but can also be applied on the optical-fiber alignment system.