SPIE Newsroom
10.1117/2.1200704.0625
Optical fiber interferometer for
potentially fast on-line surface
measurement
Xiangqian Jiang
Fast surface-profile measurements have been conducted with an uncer-
tainty of just 4.1nm and no active noise compensation.
The broad use of micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) has
highlighted one of the most critical problems of micro- and
nanoscale manufacturing: a need for fast surface measurement
for quality control on the production line. It has been reported
that currently the quality of fabrication depends largely on the
experience of the engineer through an expensive trial-and-error Figure 1. A schematic diagram of the proposed surface measurement
approach (hit and miss). As a result, most of the items manufac- system: the interference (which produces the measured signal) occurs
tured suffer from high scrap rates (low yields). between the zeroth and first-order diffracted beams.
Optical on-line and in-process surface measurement has been
continuously reported by many research groups around the
world over the last thirty years. Most of these are based on light- interference between the zeroth-order and first-order diffracted
scattering techniques1–4 that can provide a qualitative evalua- beams. Wavelength changes in the tunable laser induces first-
tion of surface texture or detect defects with micro-level features. order diffraction angle changes on the phase grating, and pro-
Their main drawback is that they cannot be used to quantita- duces the spatial scanning, whilst the zeroth-order diffracted
tively assess the sub-micron features of surface texture with any beam remains at the same position.
sort of traceability. To get around these problems, we previously In order to ascertain the accuracy of the setup, a piezoelectric
developed a multiplexed fiber interferometer for on-line surface transducer was used to displace the reference mirror in 50nm
metrology.5 steps over a 250 nm range. The profile of the mirror surface was
More recently, to further eliminate the phase noise in the origi- measured after each step. The measurement beam was scanned
nal fiber interferometer, we proposed an optical fiber interferom- over the surface of a flat mirror by sweeping the laser wave-
etry system with an improved configuration. The basic idea of length between 1560nm and 1595nm, which translates to a lat-
the proposed system is to replace traditional mechanical stylus eral scan width of 1.89mm across the mirror. The difference be-
scanning with optical beam scanning to realize fast and long- tween each consecutive step was then taken and was plotted in
range profile measurements. The system composed of an on- Figure 2(a).
machine optical dispersive probe and a remote opto-electro sys- Figure 2 (b) shows the average displacements of each consec-
tem as illustrated in Figure 1. Light from a tuneable laser is utive step and the linear fit for the data: the standard deviation is
coupled into an optical circulator and is then collimated by a 4.1nm. It is assumed that the variation between the results is due
graded-index lens. The light is passed through a phase grat- to temperature drifts, as there was an approximately 15s time
ing in the probe and is projected onto the surface to be mea- lapse between each measurement.
sured: it is then reflected and collected by the optical probe. The
measurement signal of this optical interferometer is obtained by
Continued on next page
10.1117/2.1200704.0625 Page 2/2
SPIE Newsroom
5. D. J. Lin, X. Jiang, F. Xie, W. Zhang, L. Zhang, and I. Bennion, “High stabil-
ity multiplexed fibre interferometer and its application on absolute displacement
measurement and on-line surface metrology,” Opt. Express 12(23), pp. 5729–5734,
2004.
Figure 2. Results of the repeatability experiment. The surface was mea-
sured five times by sweeping the laser wavelengths between 1560nm
and 1595nm, which corresponds to 1.89mm scan range across the sur-
face: (a) raw data and (b) data with DC offset removed.
In conclusion, a surface measurement method with a near-
common-path configuration has been introduced. The beauty of
the measurement system lies in the implementation of the zeroth
order diffracted beam as the reference for the interferometer, so
that it remains still when the measuring beam scans the surface.
Most of the environmental noise in the fiber is eliminated with-
out any servo control, as there is no beam splitting across the
fiber.
Current research is focused on designing a complete optical-
electronic system to further reduce the environmental noise, pro-
viding dynamical compensation for the optical system, and try-
ing to provide a new measurement instrument for fast on-line
micro/nano-scale surface measurement.
Author Information
Xiangqian Jiang
Centre for Precision Technologies
University of Huddersfield
Huddersfield, UK
Dr. Xiangqian Jiang is a professor of Precision Metrology. She has
been involved in optical instrumentation for more than fifteen
years, doing work that has included phase-grating, optical-fiber,
and optical-chip interferometry for micro- and nanoscale surface
measurement.
References
1. T. V. Vorburger and E. [Link], “Optical techniques for online measurement of
surface-topography,” Precis. Eng, 3(2), pp. 61–83, 1981.
2. O. Ryabov, K. Mori, and N. Kasashima, “Laser displacement meter application
for milling diagnostics,” Opt. Lasers Eng. 30(3–4), pp. 251–263, 1998.
3. C. J. Tay, S. H. Wang, C. Quan, and H. M. Shang, “In situ surface roughness
measurement using a laser scattering method,” Opt. Commun. 218(1–3), pp. 1–10,
2003.
4. S. H. Wang, Y. H. Tian, C. J. Tay, and C. G. Quan, “Development of a laser-
scattering-based probe for on-line measurement of surface roughness,” Appl.
Opt. 42(7), pp. 1318–1324, 2003.
c 2007 SPIE—The International Society for Optical Engineering
