Limiting factor for a piezoelectric tube scanner

In most nanotechnology applications, speed and precision are important requirements for obtaining good topographical maps of material surfaces using atomic force microscopes (AFMs), many of which use piezoelectric tube scanners (PTSs) for scanning and positioning at nanometric resolutions. However, PTS suffers from various intrinsic problems that degrade its positioning performance, such as: (i) lightly damped low-frequency resonant modes due to its mechanical structure; (ii) nonlinear behavior due to hysteresis and creep; and (iii) the cross-coupling effect between its axes (in 3D positioning systems such as AFMs). This paper presents a survey of the literature on the PTS, an overview of a few emerging innovative solutions for its nanopositioning and future research directions.