A digital charge amplifier for hysteresis elimination in piezoelectric actuators

Piezoelectric actuators are commonly used for nanopositioning due to their high resolution, low power consumption and wide operating frequency, but they suffer hysteresis, which affects linearity. In this paper, a novel digital charge amplifier is presented. Results show that hysteresis is reduced by 91% compared with a voltage amplifier, but over long operational periods the digital charge amplifier approach suffers displacement drift. A non-linear ARX model with long-term accuracy is used with a data fusion algorithm to remove the drift. Experimental results are presented.