Physik Instrumente (PI) has introduced vacuum-compatible versions of the LPS-24 series. Under vacuum conditions down to 10-6hPa, the miniature stages of only 24mm in width achieve a sub-nanometre resolution over a travel range of 15mm.
Thus, they fulfil important requirements for the positioning of optical and mechanical components or for the adjustment and manipulation of samples in vacuum with a confined space.
The position is measured with an integrated linear encoder that has a resolution of 150nm or 20nm. PI's own linear encoder PIOne even achieves a resolution of 0.5mm and a minimum step size of 1nm.
A version of LPS-24 for ultra-high vacuum up to 10-9hPa is available. It allows the smallest incremental motions of 40nm.
In the stage series LPS-24 PI uses directly driven Nexact stepping drives. They combine the benefits of piezo actuators as regards resolution, stiffness and vacuum compatibility with long travel ranges. A position-controlled system with Nexact drive allows a constant and consistent nanostepping mode along a predefined motion profile to the target position. Thanks to this functional principle, the LPS-24 linear positioning stages reach not only high positioning accuracy, but also high path accuracy.
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