Fabrication and testing of three-dimensional stages providing displacement of up to 8 /spl mu/m

We have designed and fabricated 3D stages driven by electrostatic comb actuators, which are to be substituted for a PZT tube scanner in a scanning probe microscope (SPM) system. The 3D stage consisted of traveling tables, suspensions and comb actuators, which were fabricated in 20 /spl mu/m-silicon-layer on an SOI (silicon on insulator) wafer using a DRIE (deep reactive ion etching) process. The DRIE process was also used to form inclined leaf springs in the suspensions. The 3D stage was installed in a commercial SPM system, and surface topography measurements were carried out to determine the performance.