Optical profiler based on spectrally resolved white light interferometry

Abstract

A white light interferogram can be decomposed into its constituent monochromatic interferograms using a spectrograph. By imaging the white light interferogram on the entrance slit of the spectrograph, the intensities of the monochromatic components can be accessed at its output plane by the pixels of a CCD detector along the direction of dispersion. For a given optical path difference (OPD) in the interferometer, the phases of these constituents are different and linearly related to the wave number of the constituent spectral component. If the phases of all the constituents are determined, the OPD can be obtained as the slope of the phase versus wave number linear fit. Since the OPD is related to the height of the test object at a point, a line profile of the object can be determined if the OPD is measured along the pixels of the CCD parallel to the entrance slit of the spectrograph. To get at the line profile, we must therefore determine the optical phase at all the pixels of the CCD detector. The phase-shifting technique is an obvious choice for this. A piezoelectric transducer (PZT) phase shifter is most common in the application of the phase-shifting technique to monochromatic interferometry. We present the experimental result based on our recent proposal that the conventional PZT phase shifting, although nonachromatic, can be used for this application as well with success.