Generating and measuring displacements up to 0.1m to an accuracy of0.1 nm: is it possible?

Four major tasks of accurate positioning are examined: generating highly repeatable motion in a workspace, constructing a metrology frame from highly -stable, accurate lines and planes, realizing a metric in the workspace, and linking the workpiece to the coordinate system with a probe. Optical scales, x -ray interferometry, optical heterodyne interferometry, Fabry-Perot etalons, and impedance -based transducers are evaluated as possible means to realize a metric. The major error sources, practical limitations, and guidelines for establishing a coordinate reference frame are described. The repeatability of sliding bearings and flexure bearings is examined and this combined with cosine and Abbé offset errors is used to estimate uncertainties in generating and measuring linear motion. Finally, the effects of probesubstrate forces and energies of interactions on positioning accuracy are discussed. Estimates of the overall uncertainty for positioning a probe over an area of 100 mm x 100 mm indicate that achieving the goal given in the title will be very difficult; uncertainties of 1 10 nm being more likely. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the availability of large -area, atomically -flat surfaces could improve our abilities to perform the four key tasks of accurate positioning with significantly greater accuracies.

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