Period measurement of a periodic structure by using a heterodyne grating interferometer.

This paper proposes an alternative method for grating period measurement based on heterodyne grating interferometry. The optical configurations for measuring the period of reflection/transmission gratings were demonstrated, and four commercially available gratings were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Based on the phase-lock technique, the grating period could be obtained immediately through the phase wrapped/unwrapped process. Under precise measurement conditions, the grating period measurement error of the proposed method was better than 1 nm, and the grating period difference between product specifications was less than 1%. In addition, the measurement results of the proposed method also exhibited high similarity with optical microscopy measurements.