[in Japanese]

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In order to shorten design lead time, recent manufacturers usually employ diversion design by using a knowledge base CAD system. In diversion design, a CAD data should be constructed by an appropriate modeling procedure in order to respond to a future diversion. However, especially a novice CAD operator hardly thinks about a modeling procedure for diversion. Therefore, it takes much time for an operator to understand a modeling procedure of CAD data which is constructed by the other, and then design lead time cannot be shortened as much as expected. We have been developing a modeling procedure document creation system, called C3 (Cubic), which supports a CAD operator to understand the modeling procedure in a short time. By applying this system, we implemented "ONT(On the Network CAD Training) system" by which an operator can efficiently learn the modeling procedure online. The ONT system was experimentally operated for verification. As a result, the efficiency of diversion design has improved by approximately 3 times that of former technique.

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In service design, reusability of knowledge about service case greatly affects success and failure of design and quality of design solution, and efficiency of design. We have already introduced the methodology which supports deriving candidates of function deployment using Universal Abduction Studio (UAS) in view model. In this report, we introduce the methodology which supports deriving a new agent in service design using UAS to increase reusability of knowledge about service case, and extend the knowledge representation scheme in function structure by including the information of parameter.

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Difficulties in converting actual service activities into a model defined within the framework of Service Engineering exist. Problems are caused by the absence of concrete and detailed method in the current modeling framework to convert real life data into information usable as input to a computer-aided design tool called Service Explorer. Thus, a detailed method of analyzing service activities is proposed to extend the current framework.

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We argue that abduction for integrating theories can be a basic principle to formalize creative design processes. Based on this principle, we have proposed Universal Abduction Studio, a design environment in which designers combine different theories to arrive at better design. In this new approach to computational support of conceptual design, the system should offer various types of abductive reasoning from which designers can select an interesting design method. This paper aims at proposing the method of handling terminology by general common ontology and managing in the multiple. We also discuss technologies to implement proposed method of managing terminology.

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In this report, we propose a method of integrated software management for distributed production management system. In order to make it easy for users to manage the application software installed in every computer in distributed environment, (1) we introduce dynamic component-connection and component-transfer techniques to the component-based software development environment named the "MZ Platform" and (2) we propose a method for developing and managing the application software using MZ Platform.

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Recently, printed wiring boards (PWBs) have been miniaturized, lightened, and made multifunctional in the electronic equipments. Therefore, a new technology is required to improve the mounting density of the PWBs. In the present report, we deal with high quality and high speed drilling of the through-holes on PWB. Especially, we investigated the tool path to drill the grid pattern holes. Also, we used the AFRP printed wiring boards as a drilling material measured the PWB temperature, and used the parameter for decision method of tool path from the obtain temperature. As a result, we propose a decision method of tool path based on considering heat damage on the PWBs for a drilling CAM system.

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There are many de facto standards of information communication systems depending on industries for device-level for manufacturing systems. Also information collaboration system between device-level and manufacturing execution system-level is needed. Therefore, this research discusses an environment of information collaboration between device-level and manufacturing execution system-level for multi-vendor and multi-device manufacturing systems. This paper describes a NC programming method for monitoring of conventional type NC controllers, and development of a prototype system based on the method.

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In recent years the drawing is designed by CAD, and the tool passing data makes it from CAM , and the metal mold is cut by the machining centre. And, CAM system easily enabled the generation of the NC program though it was not a skill engineer. But the use tool and processing conditions are decided by the skill engineer's knowledge and experience. Therefore, it is necessary to construct the system that supports the decision of the tool and processing conditions. The purpose of our research is to support the decision of the tool and processing conditions. We paid attention to tool maker's catalog. We extract the tool selection parameter by using catalog mining in this research. As a result, we were able to find a common rule and the feature of each maker that was not able to notice only by seeing the tool catalog.

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A Q&A style method is very effective for troubleshooting. We analyze the reason of the high level Q&A site on the Web. Also arc welding Q&A sites are researched. The main problem is difficulties for describing process and trouble condition. We propose the description of arc welding process and available range of process information. And arc welding troubles must be solved on the ground of the case data. We applied arc welding case base and welding standard text for the welding Q&A system as an answer.

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Recently, maintenance support systems with the Internet are used by several machine tool vendors. However, these maintenance support systems are depending upon each particular machine tool vendors. Moreover most methods of these maintenance systems are only monitoring of Open NC's console. Then, these maintenance systems can not handle other resources such as tools, materials and maintenance documents. Therefore, in this research proposed a remote maintenance system based on multi-media collaboration which can handle not only controller's information but also other resources such as tools, materials and documents. This paper describes a concept of the remote maintenance system based on multi-media collaboration and document management system which collaborates with 3-D remote monitoring system as one component of the system.

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Nowadays, plastic gears are used in many fields in our life such as domestic electrical products, AV equipments, vehicle parts and any others. And plastic gears are planned to be low cost, compactable, of high quality. But it is known as reaches the damage by the heat that assumed abrasion a cause. Moreover, the detailed mechanism on damage is not solved. The gear's generation of heat, atmosphere temperature, etc. by engagement are considered to have affected the damage mechanism. So I have researched the relationship between heat and gear by the CFD2000 simulation software and the experiment use the rack model.

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In the field of a plastic gear, a lot of gear of thin rimmed spur gear used now. They are also used to reduce both the weight of a gear and the loss of power transmission in a steel gear. However, many questions remain about the influence for strength because of few studies Web.
In the study, I tried to search for the rim thickness and the position and thickness of Web for tooth width with a parameter under the uniform load and the contact load condition per piece and demanded tooth root stress of a thin rimmed spur gear by a finite element method.

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Though generally injection molding plastic gear is molded in the 3 point gate, the gear after the molding does not become a perfect circle, since the contraction near the gate position slows down.
The tendency is same, even if this increases the gate number, and the method for improving the accuracy by the adjustment of the several times metal mold has been adopted.
The gear after it contracts, if reverse deformation tooth form based on tooth form of the first molding condition for solving such inefficiency method is given, seems to become a perfect circle.
The Software (GearPro Master) which gave this reverse deformation tooth profire was developed.
It is reported here, because there was a very effective result as a result of experimenting using this software in the molding.

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[in Japanese]

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FRP(fiber reinforced plastic) gears are now attracting attention and FRP gears have replaced metallic gear. Although many researches have done research on metallic gears, there has been few report about FRP gears. Therefore, there is no clear design criterion for FRP gears. At present, FRP gears are designed mainly based on little test data of plastic gears and experiences that engineers have. In this research, we investigate the bending fracture characteristic of FRP gears by the line load is applied to the tooth. Result, there is difference of fracture position in different gear(different fiber).The fracture position of the gear reinforced by carbon-cotton fiber is high. The high fracture position influence the bending strength of gear that is estimated by tensile strength.

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[in Japanese]

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In our group, the tiny robot with the pico-litter dispensing resolution which can be applied in the field of μTAS is developed.This dispensing mechanism is composed with a thin glass capillary and the single thin needle which driven through it.Then the liquid in the tube can be pushed out and the small amount of the liquid can be squeezed on the surface.This simple manner can allow dispensing with the resolution of a pico litter order possible.
However, it was a unexamination what condition you influenced the accuracy of
the amount of liquid. In this report the dipsensing mechanism that precisely used a vertical motion automatic stage was made to dispense in one arbitrary point under various conditions, and it experimented.

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In our group, the desktop precise production systems organized by many small robots with fine tools has been developed.
We are developing the robot that uses an electromagnet and a piezo-electric element as a precise positioning device.
However, it is difficult to speed up with the robot because the amount of displacement in the step of a piezo-electric element is too small to improve the moving speed and thus the higher productivity is not able to be achieved.
We succesfully improved the motion performance of the robot by using a amplified piezo-electric actuators.
In this report, we describe the mechanism of this robot and typical experimental results.

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In our group, we are developing the precise production system by using a lot of micro robots and we have made many varieties of robots driven by piezo elements as a precise positioning device. However, there are neither a precise measuring method nor an evaluation method that can evaluate the performance of micro robot motion, so it is difficult for users to compare the performances such motion accuracy, positioning resolution and straightness.
In this paper, we are proposing several methods about the measuring method of the basic performance of micro robot and are examining the reliability and traceability of these measurements.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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This analysis is concerned with the effect of axial load, shear deformation and rotary inertia on wave propagation in double-walled carbon nanotubes (DWCNTs) within terahertz range. Our analysis is based on Timoshenko-beam model and Euler-beam model. The present models predict some terahertz critical frequencies at which the number of wave speeds changes. In these models the amounts of wave speed is unique only when the frequency is below the lowest critical frequency. When the frequency is equal to the lowest critical frequency, there can be one or two (for CNTs of smaller radii) wave speeds. Furthermore, when the frequency is higher than the lowest critical frequency, more than one wave speed exists and waves of given frequency could propagate at various speeds. It can be seen that rotary inertia and shear deformation have a significant effect on both the wave speeds and the critical frequencies. Hence, terahertz wave propagation in CNTs should be better modeled by Timoshenko-beam model, instead of Euler-beam model.

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[in Japanese]

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We noticed to any specificity in the minimum order natural mode of in-plane transverse vibration on the bimorph type rectangle arch formed and both fixed ended piezoelectric actuator for development of linear micro-feeder as one of the micro-mechanism. Because, the mode has minute deflection characteristics, in spite of the low flexural rigidity of the upper member. Therefore, the miniaturization is easily realizable for the very simple structure. This report is described results of theoretical and experimental examination in the lowering method of the support stiffness for the longer span, the amplitude magnification or the reduction of deflection on the track member.

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[in Japanese]

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Purpose of this research is advancement in micro/nano assembly by laser manipulation. However, the technique to control position / posture of a non-spherical particle is hardly reported. We introduce method to irradiate non-spherical particle with multiple laser light sources directly. Optical trapping force and torque for non-spherical particle changing a focus position / a direction radiation of multiple laser light sources is simulated. After behavior of a non-spherical particle is simulated, control a position / posture of non-spherical particle are studied.

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This paper describes a fast-tool-servo (FTS) unit equipped with a force sensor for fabrication of microlens arrays over large areas. The FTS unit is composed of a piezoelectric actuator (PZT), a displacement sensor. The PZT and the capacitance gage are employed for control of the in-feed motion of cutting tool. A piezoelectric force sensor is integrated into the FTS-unit to detect the contact force and cutting force occurring at the interface between the tool tip and the workpiece surface. Contact experiment is carried out. Making the micro-cutting tool contact with the workpiece surface, the PZT is oscillated at 330 Hz, at which the output of the force sensor is stable. A contacting force of a 0.1 mN corresponding to an indentation depth of 60 nm is detected by the force sensor when a diamond micro-tool with a nose radius of 30 m contacts with an aluminum roller surface. Fabrication experiment is also carried out. As a result, microlens arrays, which are with a depth of 5.2 um and pitch of 50 um, are fabricated with an accuracy of 20 nm in the depth direction.

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This study develops a profilometer using stress distributions. Multiple minute hemispheres rigid bodies, an elastic body, and a sensor sheet constitute the profilometer. There is an elastic body between hemisphere rigid bodies and a sensor sheet. Therefore, the profilometer can measure various surface shapes of objects. Because a sensor sheet can detect stress distributions, the profilometer can recognize a surface shape. In consequence, the profilometer can recognizes surface shape of square, equilateral triangle and circular objects.

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In conventional confocal profiling sensors, there are cases where outliers such as high frequency components and sudden peaks are included in the measured value according to the speckles. These outliers are in general reduced by the signal processing using certain filter, while the normal value may also decrease.
In this study, signal processing is not used, and the reduction in the outliers according to the speckle is tried by the method for converting the irradiation spot from the round shape elliptically.

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A new type of 3-axis angle sensor based on the laser autocollimation for angle detection is proposed. As in the case of 2-axis angle sensor, the sensor consists of a laser diode as the light source, and a quadrant photo diode (QPD) as the position-sensing device. Differing from a conventional 2-axis autocollimator, the sensor uses a 1-axis rectangle grating for target. The sensor size can be reduced while maintaining the sensor sensitivity, because sensitivity of θx (rolling) is determined by the target grating pitch and θy (pitching), θz (Yawing) are determined by wavelength of the laser source, but not influenced by the focal length of the objective lens. Experimental results are also presented.

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We have developed "atom-tracking control" using regular crystalline surface and scanning tunneling microscope (STM). In the control, a STM tip can be locked onto an atomic apex point. In this report, we propose "direct measurement of rotating error for precision spindle using atom tracking control". In the method, a regular crystalline surface is attached to one end of the spindle and a specific atom point of the surface near by central point of rotation can be traced by a STM tip using atom-tracking control. From the 3-D traced displacement of the tip, the rotating error can be directly determined. In the report, principle and instrumentation are described.

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We have developed measuring system, which can be measured optical path of interferometer by using frequency difference, by combining a phase modulation homodyne interferometer (PMHI), a tunable laser and null method.
However, this method must measure optical path or frequency difference between neighboring null points, so there is excess process and possibility of influence on uncertainty. Hence we propose two PMHIs with two tunable lasers as light sources. By this configuration it is possible to measure optical path directly by using frequency difference between two tunable lasers.
In the report, principle and preliminary performance are described.

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In recent years, it′s well known that nano-technology is drawing attention as a revolutionary technology that can change the wide range of industries. And nano-measuring technique supports the basis of nano-technology. Super resolution microscopy by using standing evanescent light is aiming at achieving about a couple dozen nanometer-resolution by exceeding the diffraction limit. In this report, we developed the scattered light imaging system illuminated by standing evanescent light to accomplish the goal described beforehand. And by using the system, we examined the possibility of scattered light imaging by standing evanescent light.

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Semiconductor design rules and process windows continue to shrink, so we face many challenges in developing new processes such as 300mm wafer. The challenges have become more difficult because we must solve problems on patterned and un-patterned wafers. The problems include random defects, and electrical defects, which can ruin an entire wafer rather than just a die. The optics and electron beam have been mainly used for detecting of the critical defects, but the optical inspection is generally not enough sensitive for defects at 100nm geometries and below, while the SEM inspection has low throughput because it takes long time in preparing a vacuum and scanning 300mm. In order to find a solution to these problems, we propose the novel optical inspecting method for the critical defects on the semiconductor wafer. It is expected that the inspection system′s resolution exceed the Rayleigh limit by the method. In the research, we developed the experimental equipment for the super-resolution optical inspection system. The system includes standing wave illumination shift with the piezoelectric actuator, dark-field imaging and super-resolution-post-processing of images. And then, as the fundamental verification of the super-resolution method, we performed basic experiments for scattered light detection from standard particles.

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Improvement of ULSI's performances was realized by ULSI process innovation in respect of lithography and planarization process for multi-layers interconnects. In recent years, CMP technology has encountered turning for new direction such as planarization for new material of copper interconnects and Low-k dielectrics. To meet strong demand for faster semiconductor devices, the smoother copper surface should be finished, the more interconnection layers are added to the semiconductor devices. However, the difficulty as unsatisfactory finishing accuracy in conventional CMP techniques is coming up seriously in the process. As an essential solution for the problem, polishing procedure using finer abrasive grains is one of the basic ideas. In our research, CMP technique using fullerene nano-particle as primary abrasive grains for slurry is proposed. However fullerene can be resolvent not to polar solvent such as water but to nonpolar solvent.
To overcome this problem, poly-hydroxylated fullerene developed in our department is applied as an abrasive for slurry. Poly-hydroxylated fullerene modified by many hydroxyl functions shows high water solubility. Experiments were performed to investigate the caracteristics of our slurry. The initial surface roughness such as 3-4nmRMS (lateral scale of 25μm²) with waviness was improved to be 0.72nmRMS.

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Calibration specimens are fundamental materials to assure the traceability of surface profilometer. A formerly developed manufacturing system had potential to produce good sinusoidal specimens, but still had waviness problem. The system was newly modified to make precision control of compressed air pressure and temperature of the machine, compressed air and environment. As the result, the system became capable to sinusoidal specimens better than NIST-SRMs

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3-D Surface topography data often contains regions which are required to be ignored upon filtering process in addition to the immeasurable data points and outliers. The principles and characteristics of the Gaussian filter that can be applied to such kind of data are shown in this report. Two simulation datasets each contains sinusoidal flat wave and rectangular ignored region but different in direction by 45 are prepared. The characteristics of the filter are demonstrated to be isotropic by applying it to the mentioned simulation datasets. In addition, it is proved that this filter can be used as a robust filter.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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A new ultra-precision profiler was developed to measure X-ray and EUV optics such as asymmetric and aspheric profiles. Using the high precision rotational movements, the normal vectors at each points on the surface are determined by the reflected light beam goes back exactly on the same path as the incident beam. In the present study, it has achieved the nanometer measurement accuracy in a plane mirror of 460mm and elliptical profile mirror for nanometer hard X-ray fousing In addition, a plane mirror of 1m and sphered mirror of the radius curvature 300mm are measured, and the measurement accuracy is examined according to the size and the shape of the mirror.

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In this paper, a measurement method for the edge radius of a long precision tool, which is used to fabricate plastic flat films is proposed. By using image processing technique, the edge width is calculated from a line camera image and calibrated by a pin gauge to evaluate the edge radius of the tool. Measurement experiments have been carried out to compare the edge radius evaluated from the line camera image with the edge radius measured by a scanning laser microscope. The measurement results indicate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

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Nano-imprint techniques have been expected for a following lithography technique of semiconductors because of the low costs, the simple process and the high resolution. However, there is a problem that thin resist film remains in the compressed area between a wafer and a mold through patterning process. The residual resist must be etched away precisely not to cause semiconductors performance defects. Hence, in order to apply the nano-imprint techniques to semiconductor manufacturing, a non-destructive inspecting technique to measure the residual resist thickness is required. Hence, we proposed a non-destructive inspecting method of thin film thickness based on the near-field optics. The principle is following that, firstly, a metal-coated fiber probe approaches the surface and is illuminated the tip of by laser to generate near-field light. Then we can inspect a thin film by using the near-field light. This method can be expected a high spatial resolution thanks to the fact that it depends an aperture size of fiber probes. In this paper, we observed response characteristics of near-field light to film thicknesses and confirmed the validity of the proposed method via FDTD simulation and fundamental experiments.

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[in Japanese]

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In semiconductor lithography equipment, overlay errors are caused by various factors such as poor adjustment of the equipment, wafer deformation through the process, and environmental unstability of atmospheric pressure and temperature.
To explore key factors of overlay errors, this paper proposes a method of performing detailed analysis of overlay error variance.
In addition, new analysis method is explained, and an actual example of the analysis is shown.

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Stitching is a technique which enables longer measurement range of profile from several measured profiles having partly overlapped measurement range. We have been studying error propagation toward profile obtained through stitching. Here, error propagation toward profile obtained through stitching, which is analytically estimated considering error propagating model, and deviation of stitched profiles obtained from measured profiles by straightness measurement system were compared in order to evaluate the estimation.

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To evaluate the profile of ultra precision specimen, the multiprobe scanning method, such as 2-point method, 3-point method, could be applied. In this paper, the spatial frequency domain 2-point method is discussed. Firstly, the procedure for calculating one set 2-point method and combining two set 2-point method is introduced shortly. Then, the influence of systematic error is analyzed, and an error-free software calibration method is proposed. Although the systematic error is existent objectively and can not be eliminated completely, it is shown that the profile could be reconstructed perfectly without considering random error. The result of simulation confirms the theory analysis.

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Ball plates have been increasingly used for checking the performance of coordinate measuring machines (CMMs) in Japan. In future, the ball plate will become a popular gauge for checking or calibrating the CMM in Japan. Therefore, we organized two ball plate round-robin measurements to create the opportunity to relay our calibration technique to other institutes. On the first round-robin, sixteen institutes including NMIJ participated and the measurements took place from October 2003 to September 2004. On the second round-robin, six institutes including NMIJ participated and the measurements took place form November 2004 to May 2005. We describe the results of the two comparisons in this paper.

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We suggest a novel 3-D probing technique for measuring micro parts which have high aspect ratio such as groove or the deep-hole. This technique uses optical force exerted on a microsphere at the tip of optical fiber so called the fiber optical trapping. A micrometer size probe sphere is trapped at the tip of an optical fiber which has micrometer size of the diameter and sub micrometer size of tapered tip.

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