| Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1830685 | Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment | 2007 | 4 Pages |
To successfully deploy many advanced radiation detection schemes, strict control of the system's response to environmental influences is required. For micromechanical radiation detectors in particular, highly sensitive lever-motion sensors––with resolutions in the picometer range––require not only mechanical control, but overall thermal and electrical control in order to maintain a constant system response. In this work, we report on the successful development of a piezo-electric actuator controller that maintains sub-nanometer precision in a noisy environment. The inadequacy of proportional-integral-differential (PID) controllers is demonstrated and explained, and the implementation of a polarity-sensitive controller is detailed. The resulting temporal control scheme can be profitably deployed for other nonlinear systems requiring drift-free control.
