A platform to parallelize planar surfaces and control their spatial separation with nanometer resolution.

Area of Science:

• Physics
• Nanotechnology
• Materials Science

Background:

• Precise manipulation of planar surfaces at nanoscale separations is essential for investigating fundamental physical phenomena.
• Existing methods face challenges in achieving high parallelism and controlled nanoscale gap adjustments.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a novel platform for parallelizing planar surfaces with nanoscale spatial separation.
• To enable precise control over the gap between surfaces for advanced physical measurements.

Main Methods:

• Development of a platform with an integrated reflected light microscope for surface alignment.
• Utilizing micro-fabricated devices with planar surfaces (60 × 60 μm²) and quantified flatness/roughness.
• Employing an optical approach based on microscope objective depth-of-field for initial parallelization.
• Using integrated micro-electrodes for fine-tuning parallelism and experimental verification.

Main Results:

• The platform achieves angular deviation <6 μrad and gap control from 15 μm to contact with ~0.15 nm resolution.
• Optical alignment using depth-of-field resulted in angular deviation within ~500 μrad, with surface separation deviations of ~30 nm.
• Integrated micro-electrodes enabled surface roughness limited parallelization with deviations of ~5 nm.

Conclusions:

• The novel platform effectively enables parallelization of planar surfaces at nanoscale dimensions.
• The integrated optical and micro-electrode methods provide versatile approaches for achieving high-precision surface alignment.
• This technology advances the study of near-field radiative heat transport and Casimir forces.