A novel flexure-based register system for R2R electronic printing

This paper proposed a flexure-based piezo-driven register system to improve the overlay register accuracy which is the most important indicator of the roll-to-roll electronic printing. This system is composed of 3-DOF compliant stage, piezoelectric actuator (PZT), linear motor and capacitive sensor. With this system, the pose and position of the roller can be fixed precisely and the offset of the roller in radial and axial directions can be detected and compensated in real-time. It is an effective way to reduce the register errors without loss of efficiency. Two radial DOFs are provided by a compliant parallel XY stage and the axial DOF is provided by four flexure-beams. A serial decoupler based on double compound parallelogram mechanisms is adopted to promise the motion decoupling between radial direction and axial direction. The compliant mechanism and PZT are adopted due to their advantages applied for micro-controlling area such as high accuracy, high resolution and fast response. With these advantages, the register system can actively compensate the errors in real-time to limit the errors to a very small scope. Design, modeling, and experimental tests of the register system are carried out to evaluate and verify the performance of the system. In the experiment, the register errors are limited within 5 μm throughout the whole ongoing adjustment process. The experimental tests indicate that the register system can well satisfy the requirements for high precision and high efficiency.