A micropositioning stage has been developed for use with optical and electron microscopes in the accurate measurement of fine lines used by the microelectronics industry and microscopic objects such as biological cells, air pollution particles, and asbestos fibers. The stage combines a piezoelectric driving element and flexure pivoted lever arms to achieve a compact, vacuum compatible device with a resolution of 0.001 microm or less over a range of 50 microm.
At NIST, a high risk project has been undertaken to build an ultrahigh accuracy planar coordinate measuring machine capable of positioning and measuring to atomic scale accuracies over an area of 2500 mm2 . The design goal is to obtain a point-to-point spatial resolution of 0.1 nm of the distance between any two points within a 50 mm×50 mm×100 μm volume; with a net uncertainty for point-to-point measurements of 1.0 nm. Maximum specimen size will be 50 mm×50 mm×12 mm3. The approach has been to design the machine such that it can incorporate a probe, based on either a scanning tunneling microscope or an atomic force microscope, into a highly stable core mechanical structure. A spherical core structure, with crossed linear slideways for the probe and specimen carriages, was chosen for its high mechanical stiffness and ease of temperature control. Presented in this paper are: a summary of the precision instrument design fundamentals incorporated into our design; details of the overall mechanical design, X-Y drive systems, the metrology reference system, X-Y heterodyne interferometer, vibration isolation systems; and a report on the status of construction.
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