The Nanometer Optical Component Measuring Machine: a new Sub-nm Topography Measuring Device for X-ray Optics at BESSY.

The Nanometer Optical Component measuring Machine (NOM) has been developed at BESSY for the purpose of measuring the surface figure of optical components up to 1.2 m in length used at grazing incidence in Synchrotron Radiation beamlines. It is possible to acquire information about slope and height deviations and the radius of curvature of a sample in the form of line-scans and in a three dimensional display format. With the NOM surfaces up to 600 cm2 have been measured with an estimated measuring uncertainty in the range of 0.01 arcsec rms and with a correspondingly high reproducibility. This is a five to tenfold improvement compared to the present state of the art of surface measuring techniques. The engineering conception, the design of the NOM and the first measurements are discussed in detail. © 2004 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]