Conceptual design of compliant leveling mechanism

In the process of aligning two wafers, leveling them is a very important means to ensure a high aligning precision. A practical and compliant leveling mechanism to smooth away the faults existing in present leveling mechanisms was proposed in the course of microfabrication. This mechanism has the advantages of the high leveling precision, the short leveling time, the compact mechanical configuration, the simple movement control unit, etc. The leveling principle and its corresponding conceptual design were discussed. In the section of conceptual design, the mechanical configuration and the structure of the key parts (flexure hinge) used in the leveling mechanism were introduced, and restriction conditions were established as well for calculating main design parameters from the following three aspects: the original-dimension restriction, the deformative-dimension restriction and the stress restriction. The elasticity of the key part was calculated employing the energy method, and the simulation of the elasticity using commercial finite element analysis software ANSYS8.0 was carried out, which verifies the former theoretical calculated result. Some key problems to be solved in the design were put forward.