Error analysis of a NanoMechanical drill

With the use of new materials and nanoprocessing techniques such as layered deposition and surface micromachining, a three dimensional nanodrill has been successfully manufactured [O' Neal et al., 2002]. The nanodrill is intended for drilling holes on the order of a few hundred nanometers. Several applications can be envisioned for such a device, from uses in data storage technologies to the creation of microfluidic channels. Due to the high accuracies often required for technologies on this scale, the dimensional quality of the final hole is of interest. The error analysis performed in this paper is used to determine the final error in the size and position of the drilled hole due to static and kinematic effects. A linearized sensitivity approach is used to identify the most important factors influencing the hole's quality. The results indicate that the high tolerances in the existing drill's architecture make it impossible to obtain holes of the proposed dimensions.