Despite the introduction of phase-shifting interferometers in the 1980's, high volume catalog and camera production
lenses are still inspected using qualitative visual fringe inspection methods. This error-prone inspection technique
requires the human operator to quickly judge whether the lens “passes” or “fails” based on the appearance of the fringes.
Although this method is sufficient for optics with < 0.25 wave of surface figure irregularity, it is not sensitive enough to
properly inspect surfaces in the increasingly common 0.1 wave regime. Furthermore, as visual fringe inspection is not
quantitative, it does not produce the statistical surface measurement data that is necessary to monitor and optimize
production polish process yields.
To overcome these disadvantages, we have developed a robust, quantitative lens surface inspection instrument. A
compact, user-friendly, and economical 60 mm aperture Fizeau interferometer directly addresses production optical test
applications, providing rapid vibration-robust optical surface measurements of P-V irregularity, RMS irregularity,
astigmatism magnitude, and power via a simple touch-screen interface. Pass/Fail criteria are applied to these values,
enabling accurate and repeatable sorting of production optics based on these quantitative values and eliminating human
interpretive error. Batch statistics are also displayed and stored for customer inspection reports and rapid polish process
feedback. This paper will also describe how next-generation Fizeau interferometers serve as part of a total optical
production process improvement strategy.
A conventional phase shifting interferometer is capable of measuring opaque surfaces with sub-nanometer precision.
However, it cannot be used to measure an object with multiple parallel reflective surfaces such as a transparent plate, a
glass disk, or an Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUVL) mask blank. This is because the plane parallel reflective
surfaces generate multiple interferograms that are superimposed in the recording plane of the interferometer. Although
every individual interferogram is associated with phase information that is related to the height or thickness, the
conventional interferometer is not able to differentiate one surface from another. To measure these surfaces, we have
developed a method that integrates a Fizeau interferometer with a tunable light source and a weighted least-square
technique. The tunable light source controls the wavelength during the data acquisition process, producing phase shift
speeds that are proportional to the optical path difference (OPD). The weighted least-square signal processing
technique separates each surface from the others in an optimal manner. Thus the desired information, such as the front
surface height, back surface height, and relative optical thickness of a plane-parallel transparent glass plate are extracted
without multi-surface fringe print-through artifacts. In this paper we will present the method and demonstrate its
performance. The demonstrated surface height accuracy for EUVL mask blank substrates is 5 nm and the RMS
repeatability is <0.01 nm.
Phase shifting interferometry (PSI) is a highly accurate method for measuring the nanometer-scale relative surface height
of a semi-reflective test surface. PSI is effectively used in conjunction with Fizeau interferometers for optical testing,
hard disk inspection, and semiconductor wafer flatness. However, commonly-used PSI algorithms are unable to produce
an accurate phase measurement if more than one reflective surface is present in the Fizeau interferometer test cavity.
Examples of test parts that fall into this category include lithography mask blanks and their protective pellicles, and
plane parallel optical beam splitters. The plane parallel surfaces of these parts generate multiple interferograms that are
superimposed in the recording plane of the Fizeau interferometer. When using wavelength shifting in PSI the phase
shifting speed of each interferogram is proportional to the optical path difference (OPD) between the two reflective
surfaces. The proposed method is able to differentiate each underlying interferogram from each other in an optimal
manner. In this paper, we present a method for simultaneously measuring the multiple test surfaces of all underlying
interferograms from these superimposed interferograms through the use of a weighted least-square fitting technique.
The theoretical analysis of weighted least-square technique and the measurement results will be described in this paper.
Mask substrates for advanced semiconductor microlithography at 157 nm and 13 nm (EUV) require a surface flatness of 50 nm P-V. Production polishing methods require the surface metrology accuracy to be about 1110th this tolerance, or 5nm. Interferometric measurement accuracy is affected by the following factors: fringe pattern from the backside of the plane-parallel substrate, accuracy of the reference flat surface, retrace error of the interferometer optics, and coherent noise (speckle) associated with the coherent source. This paper describes the performance of a new wavelength-shifting Fizeau interferometer that is capable of simultaneously measuring the surface height of the front and back surfaces of an EUVL mask blank substrate to an absolute accuracy of 5 nm and an RMS repeatability of <0.01 nm. Unlike conventional Fizeau interferometers, it can simultaneously measure front surface height, back surface height, and relative thickness of a plane-parallel transparent glass plate while minimizing multi-surface fringe print-through artifacts. Surfaces with substrates as thin as 2 mm can be measured by this instrument, although the technology is readily extendable to thinner substrates. Back side fringe print-through is shown to be in the range of 0.1-0.5 nm P-V. Additional features of this new interferometer include a 300 mm diameter aperture, a set-up configuration suitable for automated part handling, an optical design optimized for low retrace error, a wavelength-tunable AlGaAs laser diode operating at 850 nm, a fiducialized transmission flat surface that is calibrated to 3 nm absolute accuracy, and a spatially incoherent source configuration for low speckle noise performance. Measurement data as well as an accuracy budget are presented.
We describe a new two-frequency lidar for measuring mesospheric Na temperature profiles that uses a stabilized cw single-mode dye laser oscillator (rms frequency jitter < 1 MHz) followed by a pulsed dye power amplifier (140 MHz FWHM linewidth) that is pumped by an injection-locked Nd:YAG laser. The laser oscillator is tuned to the two operating
frequencies by observing the Doppler-free structure of the Na D2 fluorescence spectrum in a vapor cell. The lidar technique and our initial observations
of the temperature profile between 82 and 102 km at Ft. Collins, CO (40.6°N, 105°W) are described. Absolute temperature accuracies at the Na layer peak of better than K with a vertical resolution of 1 km and an integration period of approximately 5 mm were achieved in this initial experiment. Finally, we discuss a multiple frequency technique for the simultaneous measurement of both temperature and Doppler wind profiles.
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