Micro and Nano Metrology
The demands to manufacturing metrology are set by production, so metrology has to follow the trends of production engineering. Two of the most important trends in production engineering are miniaturization (e.g. implantable insulin pumps, cameras for mobile phones, etc.) and the incorporation of micro and nanotechnology into conventionally sized products, e.g. easy-to-clean surface modifications, embedded systems, etc. Modern manufacturing metrology has to support these developments and explore new dimensions. The new tasks are manifold and addressed by bottom-up and top-down approaches. Bottom-up is the modification of analytical tools from materials science or solid matter physics (e.g. scanning probe microscopy) for metrological purposes; top-down is the miniaturization of conventionally sized metrology devices, such as CMMs, for the measurement of micro features.