HIGH ACCURACY ATOMIC FORCE MIRCOSCOPE FOR DIMENSIONAL METROLOGY

摘要

The purpose of this work was to develop a high accuracy atomic force microscope. An AFM tip was mounted to a one degree of freedom actuator capable of 20 microns of linear travel. The project focused on limiting positioning errors due to mechanical, electrical, and thermal noise to 1 nm. A new self-sensing, self-actuating probe developed by Dr. T. Akiyama was used in our instrument [1]. The high accuracy AFM detailed in this abstract was tailored to interface with the Sub Atomic Measuring Machine (SAMM) [2], a metrology device developed at the University of North Carolina at Charottle. The SAMM uses Halback motor arrays to control the position of a neutrally buoyant stage in six degees of freedom. The SAMM stage has demonstrated 0.1 nm resolution, 1 nm repeatability, and 25 nm accuracy. Together these two instruments will be used to generate a high accuracy contour plot of given samples whereby the SAMM stage will raster scan a sample while the AFM reads its height. The AFM was made to achieve compatible performance as the SAMM stage.