Design of a long stroke translation stage for AFM

A new metrological AFM is developed for the Dutch standards laboratory. This instrument consists of a translation stage with a stroke of 1×1×1 mm and a custom-designed AFM measurement head. Here the design of the translation stage, consisting of elastic straight guides, Lorentz-actuators with weight and stiffness compensation and interferometric translation measurement systems, will be discussed. Some preliminary results on the performance of the actuation system are presented.