In this paper, a two-step identification method for a micropositioning stage with piezoelectric actuator is proposed. It is noted that one of the difficulties encountered in identification is that both input and output of the actuator embedded in the stage cannot be measured directly. Moreover, hysteresis existing in piezoelectric actuators is a non-smooth complex nonlinearity. In the proposed modeling method, a sandwich model with hysteresis is used to describe the performance of the micropositioning stage with piezoelectric actuator. In this modeling architecture, the input linear submodel is utilized to describe the behavior of preceded amplifier with filtering circuit, which provides electrical voltage to the piezoactuator, and the output linear submodel is employed to depict the flexural hinge with load, respectively, while a Duhem function embedded in between the input and output linear submodels is employed to describe the hysteresis characteristic of piezoelectric actuator in the stage. At the first step of the identification procedure, a special excitation input is implemented to excite the stage to decompose the hysteresis into a monotonic polynomial within a certain region. Then, the parameters of linear submodels are separated and estimated. Subsequently, at the second step, an input signal that can fully excite the system within the operation region is implemented to excite the stage. Based on the previously estimated linear submodels, both input and output of the piezoactuator are estimated. Then, in terms of the estimated input and output of the piezoactuator, the parameters of the hysteresis submodel are estimated. Finally, experimental results are presented to verify the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]