Technical Elements of Nanometrology

In this lecture, we discuss the fundamental technical elements of nanometrology--the nanoscale, the nanoguide, the nanodrive, and the nanoprobe, review our research results at Tsing Hua University, and present some new results at Center for Measurement Standards/ITRI. In order to meet the precision requirement of laser metrology for ASTROD, and to realize the new definition of kilogram, we have studied the sub-nanometer laser metrology and built up a nanopositioning system consisting of heterodyne interferometer, flexure stage, and VMEbus real-time control system. We also integrated a nanopositioning system with a home-made scanning tunneling microscope to construct a calibrated STM that could provide the measurement of critical dimension of microstructure traceable to the SI unit of length. These two topics are the main focus of our discussion.