Combining three wavelength illumination and parallel phase shift interferometry for high-speed high-resolution and real-time motion tracking and 3D imaging (Conference Presentation)

Abstract

Phase based imaging and sensing have been for decades effective optical methodologies for high resolution surface profiling. Several techniques for acquiring the phase information encoding the surface topography have been developed; the most prominent is phase shift interferometry (PSI) in which several phase shifted interference images are usually acquired in a sequence and are algebraically combined to extract the phase information. However, phase imaging is limited both by the 2π phase modulo limiting the ability to map structures with heights only up to half the source's wavelength i.e. several hundreds of nm, and also by error induced by the movements of the sample between the acquisitions of phase shifted interference images. Several approached for dealing with these limitations have been developed that provided only a limited solution, e.g. using a beat wavelength interferogram by a two wavelength illumination but that is more sensitive to phase noise and thus less accurate and parallel PSI in which all phase shifted images are acquired simultaneously but that does not resolve the height limitation. We have developed a combined and improved technique for parallel PSI and three wavelength illumination enabling overcoming both limitations without elevating phase noise sensitivity and have set up two prototypes: the first allowing video rate 3D imaging of moving samples such as biological live samples or high throughput scanning of metrology samples with nm scale resolution, and the second allowing single point very high speed axial motion tracking and vibrometry with sub-nm scale resolution and max step height of 30µm.