Bruker has received a USD1.1m (GBP711,665) contract to supply a customised N8 Titanos large-sample atomic force microscope (AFM) to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
The instrument will be used by the NIST's Precision Engineering Division (PED) at its Manufacturing Engineering Laboratory, mainly for metrology applications that require traceable AFM (T-AFM).
The T-AFM instrument will provide fundamental traceable nanoscale length metrology - an area where NIST serves customers in semiconductor manufacturing, optics and photonics, data storage and biomedical industries.
The instrument will be installed at NIST's facilities in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and will be used to measure various parameters such as height, pitch-surface roughness and line-width roughness.
This N8 Titanos will be equipped with onboard metrology traceable to the SI (International System of Units) definition of the meter, which is implemented through laser interferometry using 633nm-wavelength iodine-stabilised He-Ne lasers in all three axes.
Bruker's next-generation N8 Titanos was introduced in December 2009.
The system is designed to provide high stability and precision in surface measuring applications down to atomic resolution.
The single-plane architecture with a rigid granite base is said to provide advantages over multi-component metal translation systems.
The N8 Titanos can accommodate samples measuring up to 300 x 300mm and can be equipped with additional inspection techniques, such as optical microscopy.
Its AFM performance with a low noise level (RMS [Z] less than 0.05nm) can provide high-quality results for metrology and other measurements, according to Bruker.
