For the robust control, sliding mode control has gained a great attention. Sliding mode control has the good robustness, because it makes the state of system reach the origin of the state space, by a varying the structure of system on the sliding surface. The slope of sliding surface affects to the control performance. If it is small, robustness is increased at the expense of reaching time. On the contrary, if it is large, reaching time is decreased at the expense of robustness and overshoot. In this paper, to design the optimal sliding surface, optimal control theory is introduced. To confirm the validity of the proposed method, the position control of step motor is implemented.