Improved topography measurement with a high dynamic range using phase difference sensing technology.

Phase difference sensing technology (PDST) is employed for topography measurement, and two interference structures are proposed to achieve upper-limit adjustment and high resolution in the measurement range: a dual-wavelength system with a single Fabry-Perot (FP) cavity and a single-wavelength system with dual FP cavities. The phase difference between the two interference signals is determined by an elliptic fitting algorithm (EFA), and this change in phase difference is utilized to characterize the step height. Experimental results indicate that the measurement upper-limit can be adjusted to either 410 µm, 187 µm, or 108 µm by varying the wavelength difference in the dual-wavelength system, which gives a measurement error of 2.

Improved ellipse-fitting phase demodulation technique to suppress the effect of light source intensity noise in interferometric system.

An improved ellipse-fitting algorithm phase demodulation (EFAPD) technique is proposed to reduce the influence of light source intensity noise on a system. In the original EFAPD, the sum of the intensities of coherent light (ICLS) is an important part of the interference signal noise, which makes the demodulation results suffer. The improved EFAPD corrects the ICLS and fringe contrast quantity of the interference signal by an ellipse-fitting algorithm, and then calculates the ICLS based on the structure of pull-cone 3 × 3 coupler, so as to remove it in the algorithm.