Industrial Uses of STM and AFM**Contribution of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Not subject to copyright except for illustrations taken from other sources.

We review the field of STM and AFM as applied to industrial problems, and we classify the applications into four classes: research with potential benefit to industry, research performed by industry, applications off-line in manufacturing, and applications on-line in manufacturing. We also discuss the role of metrology for certain applications and briefly review many other types of SPMs besides STM and AFM. We conclude by emphasizing ultra-precision positioning, nanofabrication, and biomedical applications as important future directions in the field.