Every year Standa Company supplies for laboratories and linear motion market thousands of unique translation and rotation positioners for wide spectrum of positioning applications. Nanometer and Sub-nanometer resolution is impossible to reach with high speed screw drives and linear motors, for this reason we have prepared product line based on piezo elements.

Series 8NTS-Z are perfectly suitable for smooth sub nanometer translation of optical elements or probe in open and closed loop system.

Movable central part hangs on flexible springs and is driven with piezo actuators to ensure high stiffness and stability of application. 8NTS design provides excellent linearity and flatness of the movement, in contrast to the classical scanners based on piezoelectric tubes, where the scan surface is a sphere. In addition, plane-parallel scanners have higher mechanical strength, compared with fragile piezoelectric tubes.

Z axis piezo positioning stage 8NTS-Z is equipped with capacitive sensor, which is included to the chain of digital feedback, to keep position constant.This provides high accuracy and linearity of movement, eliminates the effects of drift (creep) piezoceramics. TDC chip (time-to-digital conversions), measures the capacitance sensor, which is located as close to the sensor and produces a digital signal proportional to the measured capacitance. This minimizes the influence of external electromagnetic noise, and long cable for connection shifts to the controller can be used.

Z-objective nanofocusing stage is designed for moving and positioning along a single axis. In particular, to move the lens along the optical axis for focus position change with respect to the sample surfaces or objects in the sample. Moreover, such advances are a crucial element in 3D confocal microscope. Combined with XY stage, working in the plane XY, such systems allow to obtain a full three-dimensional confocal images of various objects. However, the use of this device is not limited by only movement of lenses of microscopes.

To control 8NTS-Z piezo stage, universal controllers 8NSC-3000 or 8NSC-1000 are used as well as NSpec software.

Applications of 8NTS-Z include scanning probe microscopy (e.g. atomic force microscopy), nanopositioning, metrology, biology research, microelectronics, micromanipulation etc.