Scanning white-light interferometry (SWLI) provides the capability of fast and high-precision three-dimensional measurement of surface topography. Nevertheless, it is well-known that white-light interferometers more than imaging microscopes suffer from chromatic aberration caused by the influence of dispersion. In this paper several interferometric measurement systems are used for surface topography measurement. A Linnik interferometer and two Michelson interferometers of different aberration correction are compared. A correction system designed using the ray tracing software “Zemax” aims at an optimization the modulation transfer function (MTF). Although the MTF is optimized the resulting spot diagrams are blurred due to chromatic aberration. Finally, a doubly corrected Michelson interferometer will be presented. For this interferometer a nearly optimal MTF as well as minimized spot diagrams are achieved.

Date Published: 13 May 2013
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 8788, Optical Measurement Systems for Industrial Inspection VIII, 87882G (13 May 2013); doi: 10.1117/12.2020250

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8788:
Optical Measurement Systems for Industrial Inspection VIII
Peter H. Lehmann; Wolfgang Osten; Armando Albertazzi, Editor(s)