Interferometric Microscope for Vibrating Surface Measuring

Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes a new interferometric microscope for vibrating surface measurements. In this device, a microlens array is used to create an array of light spots, which will be projected onto a vibrating surface. The back-scattered reflected light from the surface will be collected by an imaging channel and then input to a conventional CCD camera. The CCD camera will be used to align the system, and to obtain information regarding the initial position of the surface. This will be accomplished using the principals of confocal microscopy, and will achieve an accuracy of about 1 mm. In the second, interferometric channel, a digital method will be used to simultaneously measure the time domain structures of the interference signals over a number of points (40 x 40 points, with a separation of 25 micron). This will provide such critical information as amplitude of vibrating surface with an extremely high precision (0.01 nm). The device's acquisition times will be extremely fast (about 0.01 sec), and, after fast data processing, data will be displayed within 0.5 sec.