A new chattering free PD-sliding mode hybrid control scheme is proposed for robot manipulators. This hybrid controller is composed of a PD controller and a semi-continuous sliding mode controller. It has a good robust performance in reaching mode which does not possess invariance property of sliding mode, and has chattering free characteristics in sliding mode. Thus, the PD-sliding mode hybrid controller has a good robust performance in the whole region. It is shown that the proposed control has a good transient response and trajectory tracking performance for a 2-link SCARA robot manipulator.