Design of a low cost submicron measuring probe

In this paper a new low cost design is presented. The moving element of the probe head consists of the stylus and a crossform intermediate body with a small aluminium enhanced mirror at the two ends and at the center. The intermediate body is suspended on four springs made of berillium-copper foils. The displacement of the probe tip is calculated from the displacement and the rotations of the mirrors measured by modified optical pick-ups. In order to test probes a calibration system with 20 nm measuring uncertainty was designed. A high precision three-axis translation stage, with a working range of 100 times 100 times 100 mum, moves the probe stylus and the position of the stage is determined by three mutually-orthogonal plane mirror laser interferometer transducers having 1 nm resolution.