A TDC-based nano-scale displacement measure method inside scanning electron microscopes

The one of the most important foundations of micro-manipulation is the micro- and nano- displacement's accurate measurement. This paper focused on the end effectors measurement for a nano-manipulation robot, which is working in the scanning electron microscope's vacuum chamber. A standard capacitor are charged and discharged through the strain gauge, and the time are measured by time-digital convertor, which can be used to calculate the displacement. The power consumption are analyzed and compared with traditional Wheatstone bridge. The power consumption is greatly reduced while the error is optimized, so it takes advantages in the environment of vacuum, which is hard to dissipate heat. The drift, resolution and linearity are tested, and demos of closed-loop control and repeated micro unit probing are given to verify the validity of this method.

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