Abstract:  

Scanning Electron Microscopes are extensively used for accurate micro/nano images exploring. Several strategies have been proposed to ?ne tune those microscopes in the past few years. This work presents a new ?ne tuning strategy of a scanning electron microscope sample table using four bar piezoelectric actuated mechanisms. The introduced paper presents an algorithm to ?nd all possible inverse kinematics solutions of the proposed mechanism. In addition, another algorithm is presented to search for the optimal inverse kinematic solution. Both algorithms are used simultaneously by means of a simulation study to ?ne tune a scanning electron microscope sample table through a pre-speci?ed circular or linear path of motion. Results of the study shows that, proposed algorithms were able to minimize the power required to drive the piezoelectric actuated mechanism by a ratio of 97.5% for all simulated paths of motion when compared to general nonoptimized solution.