A traceability infrastructure for three-dimensional surface measurements at the National Physical Laboratory

摘要

The manufacture of three-dimensional structured surfaces is leading to a step change in the design and production of modern manufactured products. In the near future, new ISO standards for the measurement and characterisation of three-dimensional (areal) surfaces will be published and industry will be able to fully embrace the new technologies. To address the areal measurement requirements for surface structuring, NPL has developed a new traceable measuring instrument with a working range of 8 mm × 8 mm × 0.1 mm and corresponding measurement uncertainties of 50 nm × 50 nm × 5 nm at a confidence level of 95 %. The instrument is stylus based but with a novel, low force probe, capable of collecting data at high speed. NPL has also developed transfer artefacts that can be calibrated using the new traceable instrument and subsequently used to verify commercial stylus and optical instruments.