We have developed a new atomic force microscope with differential laser interferometers (DLI-AFM), carried out test measurements of the prototype 1D-grating standards with pitches of 100, 80, 60 and 50 nm using the DLI-AFM and evaluated the uncertainty in the pitch measurements. In the procedures of the pitch calculation, two types of definitions of the peak positions, ‘the centre of gravity method’, and ‘the zero-crossing method’, were compared. The zero-crossing method was adopted in this study since the standard deviation of pitches by the zero-crossing method was smaller than that by the centre of gravity method. The expanded uncertainty (k = 2) was approximately 0.20 nm and was only 0.4% for the nominal pitch of 50 nm. We propose a design of usable 1D-grating standards as certified reference materials.

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This paper presents a new analogue contact probe based on a compact 3D optical sensor with high precision. The sensor comprises an autocollimator and a polarizing Michelson interferometer, which can detect two angles and one displacement of the plane mirror at the same time. In this probe system, a tungsten stylus with a ruby tip-ball is attached to a floating plate, which is supported by four V-shape leaf springs fixed to the outer case. When a contact force is applied to the tip, the leaf springs will experience elastic deformation and the plane mirror mounted on the floating plate will be displaced. The force-motion characteristics of this probe were investigated and optimum parameters were obtained with the constraint of allowable physical size of the probe. Simulation results show that the probe is uniform in 3D and its contacting force gradient is within 1 mN µm − 1. Experimental results indicate that the probe has 1 nm resolution, ± 10 µm measuring range in X − Y plane, 10 µm measuring range in Z direction and within 30 nm measuring standard deviation. The feasibility of the probe has been preliminarily verified by testing the flatness and step height of high precision gauge blocks.

Most homodyne interferometers have a quadrature detector system that includes two polarizing beam splitters that cause nonlinearity of the order of a few nanometers by phase mixing. Detectors should have the same gains to reduce nonlinearity under the assumption that there is no loss in optical components. However, optical components exhibit some loss. We show that nonlinearity can be reduced to an order of 0.01 nm when the detector gains are adjusted by simulation to include the optical characteristics. The compensated nonlinearity is 18 times smaller than that when the four detector gains are set to be equal.

Abstract:To measure various components with nano-scale precision, a new high-precision touch-trigger probe using a single low-cost sensor for a micro-coordinate measuring machine (CMM) is presented in this paper. The sensor is composed of a laser diode, a plane mirror, a focusing lens, and a quadrant photo detector (QPD). The laser beam from the laser diode with an incident angle is reflected by the plane mirror and then projected onto the quadrant photo detector (QPD) via the focusing lens. The plane mirror is adhered to the upper surface of the floating plate supported by an elastic mechanism, which can transfer the displacement of the stylus's ball tip in 3D to the plane mirror's vertical and tilt movement. Both motions of the plane mirror can be detected by respective QPDs. The probe mechanism was analyzed, and its structural parameters that conform to the principle of uniform sensitivity and uniform stiffness were obtained. The simulation result showed that the stiffness was equal in 3D and less than 1 mN/µm. Some experiments were performed to investigate the probe's characteristics. It was found that the probe could detect the trigger point with uniform sensitivity, a resolution of less than 5 nm, and a repeatability of less than 4 nm. It can be used as a touch-trigger probe on a micro/nano-CMM.