Cylindrical surface shape measurement method and measurement comparison

Abstract

Optical elements are used in various fields, in which it is required to measure spherical, aspherical, and free-form surface shapes. We use a nanoprofiler previously developed by our research group to measure a cylindrical surface shape. Unlike spherical or aspherical shapes, the cylindrical surface shape of free-form surface is rotationally asymmetrical and thus difficult to determine the measured position. Therefore, we processed fiducial marks on the measured sample and specified the measurement position by fiducial marks. Then we performed comparative measurements with a Fizeau interferometer using a computer generated hologram (CGH) as a reference plane. The nanoprofiler and interferometer measured to accuracies of 43.7 nm peak-to-valley (PV) and 60.9 nm PV, respectively; the difference between the two was 17.2 nm PV. Furthermore, a spherical shape and an aspherical shape were similarly measured by both devices. The spherical shape had a difference of 8.4 nm PV and that of the aspherical shape was 9.7 nm PV; thus the difference between the measurements of the cylindrical surface shape was larger. Considering that the guaranteed accuracy of CGH for measuring a cylindrical surface shape is ∼30 nm PV, we concluded that this is a reasonable result and fiducial marks are effective to determine the position.