Under the Microscope: Vertical Piezo Drives

Travel ranges up to 0.5 mm and resolutions of a few nanometers are the prime features of the new P-737 PIFOC Specimen Positioner from Physik Instrumente (PI). The piezoelectric drive responds in milliseconds and is thus ideally suited for applications where throughput and high accuracy are important, like screening tasks or confocal microscopy.

Focusing involves moving either the optics or the specimen. One advantage of moving the specimen instead of the objective in phase-contrast microscopy is that the image is not degraded. Furthermore, because of its small size, a vertical piezo drive can be integrated into a motorized XY scanner like the ones often already in place as one of the microscope system components. The adaptation can be made with minimal effort, and complete flexibility in the use of objectives is maintained.

For example, P-737 specimen-positioning PIFOC Z-drives can be installed in Märzhäuser XY scanners with no adaptive hardware at all. Standard specimen holders for objects from slides to Microtiter plates fit in the piezo Z drive directly. The total height of the resulting XYZ system, which is still quite small, allows its use with most common microscopes.