E-727 Piezo Nanopositioning Controller

November 13, 2020
High Performance Nanopositioning Controller for Piezo Stages

PI offers a high performance version of its E-727 family of multi-axis piezo nanopositioning controllers. The high power version provides 270 watts of peak power – close to 10X of the standard version. The enhanced performance is useful for dynamic, nanometer-level precision motion and positioning applications, such as FSM (fast steering mirrors) in free space optical communication and laser material processing, and scanning stages for super-resolution microscopy, semiconductor manufacturing, automated photonics alignment or high-speed tracking applications. The E-727 high-speed digital servo allows for precision in the nanometer and sub-nanometer range with extremely fast settling in the millisecond range.

Advanced Digital Servo

The E-727 nanopositioning controller features an advanced digital servo providing significant advantages compared to conventional analog piezo nanopositioning controllers. Digital filters provide better linearity and higher bandwidth as well as on-the-fly parameter adaptation to changed loads or production requirements. Software-adjustable notch filters allow the users to make full use of their piezo-mechanisms by suppressing mechanical resonances and yielding higher throughput and reducing step-and-settle times to milliseconds. 

Advanced Features of the E-727 Piezo Nanopositioning Controller

Other advanced features of the digital piezo nanopositioning controller include 4th-order polynomial linearization for both the piezo mechanisms and the electronics, an integrated data recorder, an ID chip for fast and quick exchange of the system components, as well as subordinate, programmable drift compensation. In addition, the dynamic performance can be further enhanced by a dynamic digital linearization (DDL) option. DDL reduces trajectory errors to an indiscernible level in the case of dynamic-periodic applications. This can improve the accuracy of high-speed scanning operations by several orders of magnitude, down to nanometer levels. 

Interfaces and Software

The E-727 nanopositioning controller comes with USB, Ethernet, and even high-resolution 20-bit analog control interfaces. Like all PI motion controllers, it is supported by LabVIEW drivers and dynamic libraries for Windows and Linux. An SPI interface provides high-speed serial data transmission.

Working with You

PI’s in-house engineered systems and components have enabled customers around the world to increase their productivity and technological advantage for 5 decades. With a large basis of standard precision motion products and proven methodologies, PI is in the position to quickly modify existing designs or provide a fully customized OEM solution to fit the exact requirements of your application from the whole motion range from finger-tip sized nano-positioners to large scale stages with long travel ranges, through a plethora of different drives and guiding systems.

Related Glossary Terms

  • inner diameter ( ID)

    inner diameter ( ID)

    Dimension that defines the inside diameter of a cavity or hole. See OD, outer diameter.