A review on the flexure-based displacement amplification mechanisms

Abstract

Multifarious flexure-based displacement amplifiers have been proposed and studied in the past decades, showing importance in many industrial fields, such as bioengineering, optical instruments, and semiconductor technology. Displacement amplifiers provide precise motion and large stroke through a simple and low-cost way compared with other piezoelectric actuators. Those merits have opened a door for new and advanced micro devices with unprecedented performance. This paper aims to proffer a comprehensive review on the design, modeling, characteristics, and applications of flexure-based displacement amplifiers, following by pointing out the inherent drawbacks in this research area such as amplification ratio limit, parasitic motion, low lateral stiffness, low natural frequency, and discussing existing solutions and some potential research directions in those topics. Finally, a summary is concluded and the future development perspectives of the displacement amplifiers are discussed. This review contributes to giving a comprehensive understanding of the displacement amplifier, which provides guidance on designing new displacement amplifiers for improving their mechanical output performance. It is also expected to be instrumental for related researchers to understand displacement amplifiers, and to successfully select and design for specific applications.