The pitch accuracy of a grating formed by laser-focused atomic deposition is evaluated from the point of view of fabricating nanoscale pitch standard artifacts. The average pitch obtained by the process, nominally half the laser wavelength, is simply traceable with small uncertainty to an atomic frequency and hence can be known with very high accuracy. An error budget is presented for a Cr on sapphire sample, showing that a combined standard uncertainty of 0.0049 nm, or a relative uncertainty of 2.3 × 10(-5), is readily obtained, provided the substrate temperature does not change. Precision measurements of the diffraction of the 351.1 nm argon ion laser line from such an artifact are also presented. These yield an average pitch of (212.7777 ± 0.0069) nm, which agrees well with the expected value, as corrected for thermal contraction, of (212.7705 ± 0.0049) nm.
Keywords: atom optics; atomic ruler; chromium lines; laser focusing; nanoscale standards; nanotechnology; pitch standards.