A high precision air bearing stage has been developed and calibrated. This linear-motor driven stage was designed to transport a glass or wafer with the X and Y following errors in nanometer regime. To achieve this level of precision, bar type mirrors were adopted for real time ΔX and ΔY laser measurement and feedback control. With the laser wavelength variation and instability being kept minimized through strict environment control, the orthogonality of this type of control system becomes purely dependent upon the surface flatness, distortion, and assembly of the bar mirrors. Compensations for the bar mirror distortions and assembly have been performed using the self-calibration method. As a result, the orthogonality error of the stage was successfully decreased from 0.04° to 2.48 arcsec.
