Despite the fact that there exists several techniques capable of characterizing the nanoparticle sizes, their measurement results from the same sample often deviate from each other at an amount that is considered significant in the nanometer scale. The principles of measurements these techniques or instruments based upon might contribute a notable portion to the disagreement of the measurement results. The sample preparation itself could only further add to the complexity of the problem. In the absence of international standards, or world-wide recognized protocols dealing with nanoparticle characterization, a comparison study was carried out to investigate the systematic deviations in measuring nanoparticle diameters. Three types of commonly used nanoparticle sizing instruments, Photon Correlation Spectroscopy (PCS), Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) were utilized to take measurements on traceable polystyrene latex samples at 100 nm, 50 nm, and 20 nm in diameter. The final analysis showed a fairly satisfactory agreement of the measured data from the samples' certified values, with the exception of the result from the Field-Emission TEM (FE-TEM). It was later determined that the major source of the deviation was attributed to the instrument rather than to the sample. Instrument calibration was the course of action taken to bring the outlier to the desired accuracy. Additionally, discussions were also made with regards to the need of standardization in nanoparticle measurements.
GPS is already a main method of positioning measurement in geodesy and is applied widely in many fields. For maintaining and ensuring the accuracy of positioning, an accurate and efficient system for calibration the GPS receivers must be established. A highly accurate GPS calibration network tied to the ITRF coordinates of IGS stations, can be effectively used to evaluate the performance of GPS receivers. This study addresses the feasibility of establishing a system for calibrating GPS receivers and the system's traceabilty in metrology. Uncertainties of the GPS calibration network established and maintained by NML (National Measurement Laboratory, Taiwan) are evaluated based on the method suggested by the ISO (International Organization for Standardization). The uncertainties of NML network coordinates are obtained and used as a basis for calibration. The results of the slope distances between pillars measured by the GPS processing units and the precise EDM units are discussed. Analytical results indicate that the 3D expanded uncertainty of the main station TNML of the network in the ITRF system is around 33.2 mm at the 95% confidence level. The 3D expanded uncertainties of the calibration points of ultra-short distance network and short distance network are evaluated to be about 22.2 mm and 3.4 mm in relation to the main station TNML, respectively, at the 95% confidence level. The precision of the NML network coordinates suffices to calibrate the geodetic and navigational GPS receivers of regional users and is available through the Internet.
The pitch calibration by a single wavelength laser and Littrow configuration laser diffractometer was presented. The calibration system consists of a green He-Ne laser, a precision angular positioning state, a four-quadrant detector, a beam splitter, and some optics. The measurement principles was based on the Littrow configuation that the reflective diffraction beam coincides with the incident beam. The pitch value was determined by the diffraction angle α and laser wavelength λ. A pitch standard, with nominal value of 292 nm, was measured by a wavelength of 543 nm green He-Ne laser diffractometer. The average pitch value was 292.10 nm. According to the "Guide to the expression of uncertainty in measurement", the system uncertainty was evaluated. The error sources included laser wavelength, refractive index of air, angular state, temperature, and coefficient of thermal expansion. The expanded uncertainty was 0.03 nm at a confidence level of 95% and 15 degrees of freedom. The main contributor of uncertainy was the positioning deviation of angular stage. Although the laser diffractometer had a high-accuracy ability, the measurement capability of Laser diffractometer was limited by the laser wavelength. The pitch p should be large than a half of laser wavelength.
Laser encoders overcome the fundamental resolution limit of geometrical optical encoders by cleverly converting the diffraction limit to phase coded information so as to facilitate nanometer displacement measurement. As positioning information is coded within the optical wavefront of laser encoders, interferometry principles must be adopted in the design of the laser encoders. This effect has posed a very strong alignment tolerance among various components of the whole laser encoder, which in turn imposes a serious user adaptation bottleneck. Out of all alignment tolerances, the head-to-scale alignment tolerance represents the most important hindrance for wider ap-plications. This paper presents a novel laser planar encoder, which serves as a two-dimensional position detection apparatus for precision machine applications and can provide a measuring resolution less than 1 nm. Improving the IBM laser optical encoder design by taking into consideration manufacturing tolerance of various optical components, an innovative two-dimensional laser encoder with ultra high head-to-scale tolerance is presented. It was identified that this newly proposed laser encoder design could avoid the effect of differences in polarization diffraction efficiencies for the 2-D grating scale used. Optimizing the system performance by cleverly designing the profile of the 2-D grating scale was also detailed. The effect of non-uniform temperature field within the head-to-scale range that can yield a nonzero initial phase so as to decrease the system measurement accuracy was analyzed. In addition, misalignment of the polarizers located in front the photodiodes were identified to be the main cause for imperfect Lissajous circles, which may lower the measuring resolution when traditional arctangent algorithm was adopted for circular polarization interferometers. The resolution of the newly developed laser planar encoder was verified by experiments and was found to agree well with the theoretical predictions.
Inductance probes are widely used in gauge block comparators. They have to be calibrated by interferometer to fulfill the traceability. To avoid the nonlinearity of interferometer within one interference fringe, a combination of digital and analog servo driving device with integer number of fringe orders of Fizeau interferometer is used to provide the movement for probe calibration. The standard deviation of positioning repeatability of the driving device is about 1 nm. Calibration is performed with double probe arrangement to simulate the actual condition of probes used in gauge block comparators. Typical sensitivity of probes is about 0.3412 V/micrometers with standard deviation of 0.087 percent while nonlinearity is about 9 nm over measuring range of +/- 10 micrometers . A 0.33 percent difference of sensitivity is observed if single probe is arranged in the calibration.
KEYWORDS: Calibration, Interferometers, Mirrors, Sensors, Signal processing, Phase interferometry, Digital signal processing, Resistance, Electronic circuits, Digital electronics
To calibrate dial indicators, gage blocks or dial indicator calibrators are usually used. For better accuracy and resolution, interferometers are used to calibrate dial indicator calibrators. Systematic errors of laser interferometers can be classified into three categories of intrinsic errors, environment errors and installation errors. Intrinsic errors include laser wavelength error, electronic error and optics nonlinearity. In order to achieve nanometer accuracy, minimizing intrinsic error is crucial. In this paper, we will address the problems of minimizing the optics nonlinearity error and describe the discrete-time signal processing method to minimize the electronic error, nonlinearity error and drift by simply using quadrature phase interferometer for nanometer accuracy and linearity.
The vibration displacement of a shaker in an accelerometer calibration system is detected by a Michelson type of a phase quadrature laser interferometer. The interferometric signals are stored in a digital storage scope and transferred to a computer for displacement calculation. Due to the high resolution, fast acquisition speed, and large memory capacity of the scope, this system demonstrates a measuring range from about 10 nm to 100 micrometers at the frequency range of DC to 20 kHz. A cyclical signal- preserving algorithm is developed to preserve the signal's phase and amplitude while reducing the drift and random noise level. The standard deviations of the measured displacements are 1.3% for 13 nm and rapidly lower to 0.04% for 500 nm or greater. The measured displacement in conjunction with the vibration frequency and the output voltage of the accelerometer then give its sensitivity. Preliminary results demonstrate that the sensitivities calibrated by both the direct displacement measuring method (our experiment) and the conventional fringe-disappearance method agree within 0.6%.
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