MRI: Development of a Nanoscale Absolute Dilatometer

这项主要研究仪器（MRI）拨款为北卡罗莱纳大学夏洛特分校精密计量中心开发和安装超精密绝对膨胀仪和必要的配套设备提供资源。该膨胀计将能够以纳米精度对各种样品进行长度测量。这将提供纳米应变测量材料性能的能力，如尺寸稳定性、热膨胀、电致伸缩和磁致伸缩。各种具有关键尺寸、形状和表面的产品在纳米领域具有公差，其商业重要性正在迅速增加。在公差和特征尺寸越来越小的同时，这些产品的整体规模保持不变或增加。以前，在百万分之一的水平上了解蠕变、尺寸稳定性、热膨胀、磁致伸缩和电致伸缩等特性就足够了，而现在和即将提出的中观和微尺度产品需要在十亿分之一的水平上了解这些特性。这项拨款支持的仪器将加强对这些特性的理解，并为下一代精密系统（如半导体光刻机）的设计提供工程数据。在这笔拨款的支持下开发的设施还将为研究生和本科生提供现代超精密测量方法的培训手段。

This Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) grant provides resources to develop and install an ultraprecision absolute dilatometer and necessary supporting equipment at the Center for Precision Metrology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. The dilatometer will be able to make length measurements of a variety of samples with nanometer accuracy. This will provide the capability of nanostrain measurements of material properties such as dimensional stability, thermal expansion, electrostriction and magnetostriction.A wide variety of products with critical dimensions, forms, and surfaces that have tolerances in the nanometer domain are of rapidly increasing commercial importance. At the same time that tolerance and feature size are becoming smaller, the overall scale of these products has remained fixed or increased. Where it had previously been sufficient to know properties such as creep, dimensional stability, thermal expansion, magnetostriction and electrostriction at the level of parts per million, current and proposed meso- and micro-scale products demand such understanding at the part per billion level. The instrumentation supported by this grant will enhance understanding of such properties and provide engineering data for the design of next generation precision systems such as semiconductor lithography machines. The facilities developed with support from this grant will also provide the means to train both graduate and undergraduate students in modern ultraprecision measurement methods.