At NIST, a high risk project has been undertaken to build an ultrahigh accuracy planar coordinate measuring machine capable of positioning and measuring to atomic scale accuracies over an area of 2500 mm2 . The design goal is to obtain a point-to-point spatial resolution of 0.1 nm of the distance between any two points within a 50 mm×50 mm×100 μm volume; with a net uncertainty for point-to-point measurements of 1.0 nm. Maximum specimen size will be 50 mm×50 mm×12 mm3. The approach has been to design the machine such that it can incorporate a probe, based on either a scanning tunneling microscope or an atomic force microscope, into a highly stable core mechanical structure. A spherical core structure, with crossed linear slideways for the probe and specimen carriages, was chosen for its high mechanical stiffness and ease of temperature control. Presented in this paper are: a summary of the precision instrument design fundamentals incorporated into our design; details of the overall mechanical design, X-Y drive systems, the metrology reference system, X-Y heterodyne interferometer, vibration isolation systems; and a report on the status of construction.
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E. Clayton Teague (1989) studied this question.