White light interferometry for surface profiling with a colour CCD

Abstract

In laser based interferometry, the unambiguous measurement range is limited to half a wavelength. Multiple wavelength or white light interferometer is used to overcome this difficulty. In this paper a white light interferometer with a colour CCD camera is discussed. We access interference intensity information from the three channels of the colour CCD simulating three-wavelength measurement. This makes the data acquisition as simple as in single wavelength interferometry. The unambiguous measurement range however gets limited by the coherence length of the CCD. The usefulness of the proposed method is demonstrated on a micro-sample.