Piezoelectric actuators control unit

Superconductive cavities for future linear accelerators, such as ILC, have extremely large quality factors that require an effective stabilization with both slow and fast tuners. Piezoelectric actuators are the most common choice for fast tuners, but one drawback for large scale applications is the limited bandwidth and the large cost of commercially available drivers. In this paper we present a low cost driver which is ideally suited for fast tuner application, large system packaging and has an extremely flexible design. Driving piezoelectric actuators having capacitive loads up to a few microFarads in the kHz range requires amplifiers with good current output capabilities at a few hundred Volts. The Piezo Control Unit we developed for the ILC Test Area at Fermilab is composed by a 6U Eurocard crate hosting 5 Piezo Driver modules capable of driving up to 10 piezoelectric actuators. The unit main specifications include large voltage rails (−175 V to +175V), wide signal bandwidth (DC to10 kHz) and low output noise (<10 mVrms). The driver is equipped with both output voltage and output current monitor.