Philips develops free-floating Maglev platform

Philips Applied Technologies has developed a planar magnetic levitation motion technology, which has a free-floating platform with six degrees of freedom. Planar Maglev builds on Philips’ earlier demonstration of a linear – rather than Planar – Maglev technology that has since been developed into a commercial product ready for OEM delivery and use. According the Philips, the platform is “unencumbered by the cables, cooling hoses and other mechanical connections typical of existing bearing-based approaches”. The technology uses an inverted mechanical design approach to apply force to a moving platform via Lorentz force actuators. These take the form of embedded permanent magnets on the platform and coils mounted on a stationary bed. Philips expects the technology to achieve nanometre precision in ultra-high vacuum (UHV) and ultra-low contamination (ULC) applications. One obvious application is semiconductor wafer fabrication.