UNCERTAINTY IN MEASUREMENTS OF DIMENSIONAL CHANGES FROM AN INTERFEROMETRIC DILATOMETER

Dongmei Ren, Jimmie A. Miller, Kevin M. Lawton Center for Precision Metrology Department of Mechanical Engineering & Engineering Science University of North Carolina at Charlotte Charlotte, NC 28223, USA
INTRODUCTION With low expansion materials finding great applications in micro-lithographic systems and other systems requiring high dimensional stability, accurate determination of the coefficients of thermal expansion of such materials becomes essential. In order to meet requirements for high accuracy determinations of the coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE) of low expansion materials and measurements of other dimensional instabilities, a nanoscale absolute interferometric dilatometer has been developed at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. This dilatometer is to measure a variety of samples of length up to 100 mm with an uncertainty of 2 nm for the measurement of dimensional change and 1 ppb/K for CTE measurement in a temperature range of 293 373 K. A novel double-pass heterodyne interferometer has been designed for this dilatometer. In this paper, the uncertainty of the measurements of dimensional changes from the interferometer is analyzed. INTERFEROMETER The working principle of the interferometer is shown in Figure 1 [1]. This interferometer has a nearly balanced design, in which the nominal optical lengths of the measurement path and reference path are equal except for the paths corresponding to the sample length.
M M

UNCERTAINTY ANALYSIS The main sources of uncertainty for measurements of dimensional changes from this interferometer include the stability of the laser wavelength, nonlinearity of the system, uncertainty of the electronics, uncertainty of the sample length, and environmental changes if the measurements are conducted in air. Measurement Equation The heterodyne interferometer determines the dimensional change of a sample by measuring the relative phase change that occurs between the optical path lengths of the interferometers measurement arm and reference arm. The displacement information given by the interferometer can be expressed as

L=k

where is the wavelength of laser in vacuum, n is the refractive index of the measurement environment, K is the resolution of the interferometer, and k is the electronic count. Considering the change in the unbalanced path, the dimensional change of the sample should be

nK

(1)

l = k

where l d is the change of the unbalanced path. For the interferometer operated in air, the major part of l d results from environmental changes. In this analysis, we use the modified Edln equation [2] to correct the change of refractive index. The correction is given by

nK

l d

(2)

PBS

PBS

l n = l[(0.93(t 20) 0.36( p 760) + 0.05( f 10)] 10 6

(3)

RAP HWP

QWP CC

Sample

QWP

where l is the length under standard conditions (t = 20 C, p = 760 mmHg, f = 10 mmHg), t , p and f are the air temperature (C), pressure (mmHg) and humidity (water vapor pressure, in

FIGURE 1. Interferometer

mmHg) of air. From equation (3), the dead-path error caused by environmental changes can be expressed as

uncertainties of

, n0 , t , p , f , t 0 , p 0 , f 0 ,

l d , n = Ls [(0.93(t t 0 ) 0.36( p p 0 ) + 0.05( f f 0 )] 10 6

(4) initial

Ls and k , respectively. u i2 (l ) represents the i th term in the equations. In equation (6), all
uncertainty components are assumed to be independent. Uncertainty of wavelength The variance in equation (6) associated with wavelength uncertainty is

where

t0 ,

p0

and

f0

are

the

temperature, pressure and humidity at the beginning of the measurement, and Ls is the sample length. Another source of l d is the change of laser wavelength during the measurement, which is treated as uncertainty in this analysis. So equation (2) becomes

u12 (l ) = ( L ) 2 u 2 ( )
The accuracy of vacuum wavelength of the laser head, Zygo ZMI 7722, is 0.16 ppm. The stability of vacuum wavelength of the laser is 10 ppb over the lifetime of the laser head and 0.5 ppb over one hour. Assuming that these uncertainties have normal distributions, the standard uncertainty caused by the accuracy is

l = k (n0 K ) {1 + [0.93(t 20) 0.36( p 760) + 0.05( f 10)] 10 6 } Ls [(0.93(t t 0 ) 0.36( p p 0 ) + 0.05( f f 0 )] 10 6

(5)

u1, a (l ) =

where

n0 is the refractive index of air at the

u a ( 0 ) = 5.3 10 8 L

standard condition. Uncertainty budget The uncertainty of the measurement of dimensional change can be estimated by considering the uncertainty sources individually and then combining them. According to the law of propagation of uncertainty [3], the combined standard uncertainty of the estimate of l in equation (5) can be determined by the positive square root of the combined variance which is given by
2 c

and the standard uncertainty caused by the long-term stability of wavelength, in which the influence of wavelength stability to the unbalanced path is included, is

u1, s (l ) =

L Ls

u s ( 0 ) 3.3 10 9 Ls

u c2 (l ) ,

Since the dimensional changes to be measured are typically smaller than 0.1 mm, the uncertainty due to wavelength is mainly in the form of the influence of wavelength instability to the dead-path length. Uncertainty of refractive index of air under standard conditions The refractive index of air under the standard condition can be calculated using the modified Edln equation with an uncertainty of

l 2 2 l 2 2 ) u ( ) + ( ) u (n0 ) u (l ) = ( n0 +( l 2 2 l 2 2 ) u (k ) + ( ) u (t ) k t l 2 2 l 2 2 +( ) u ( p) + ( ) u (f) p f l 2 2 l 2 2 +( ) u (t 0 ) + ( ) u ( p0 ) t 0 p 0 +( l 2 2 l 2 2 ) u ( f0 ) + ( ) u ( Ls ) f 0 Ls

3 10 8 (2). So the standard uncertainty associated with n0 in equation (6) is

(6)

u 2 (l ) = L n0 u (n0 ) = 1.5 10 8 L
This uncertainty term is negligibly small for measurements of small dimensional changes. Uncertainty of the detection electronics The variance associated with the uncertainty of electronics in equation (6) is
2 u3 ( l ) = (

= u i2 ( l )
i =1

10

where

u ( ) , u (n0 ) , u (t ) , u ( p ) , u ( f ) , u (t 0 ) ,

nK

) 2 u 2 (k )

u ( p0 ) , u ( f 0 ) , u ( Ls ) and u (k ) are standard

The standard uncertainty caused by electronics of the ZMI 4004 measurement system is assumed to equal the least resolution of the

interferometer, which is 4096 for a doublepass interferometer. So the resulting standard uncertainty is u 3 ( l ) = 0.15 nm. Uncertainties of environmental parameters When using the modified Edln equation to correct for environmental changes, the uncertainties in determining the air temperature, pressure and humidity cause measurement uncertainties. The variances in equation (6) associated with t , p and f are given by
2 u4 (l ) = ( L Ls ) 2 0.93 2 10 12 u 2 (t )
2 u5 ( l ) = ( L L s ) 2 0.36 2 10 12 u 2 ( p ) 2 u6 (l ) = ( L Ls ) 2 0.05 2 10 12 u 2 ( f )

Assuming that the uncertainty of the sample length is 0.1 mm and it has a normal distribution, this term of standard uncertainty is approximately 0.13 nm. Nonlinearity of the interferometer An uncertainty source that is not included in equation (6) is the nonlinearity of the interferometer, which is caused by optical mixing. The nonlinearity of the interferometer was measured using the thermal translation method [4], as shown in Figure 2. If the uncertainty is treated conservatively as having a rectangular distribution, the standard uncertainty is u11 ( l ) = 0.75 3 0.43 (nm)
Nonlinearity (nm)
1.0 0.5 0.0 -0.5 -1.0 1 2 3 4 5

Assuming that the uncertainties, which include both measurement uncertainties and nonuniformities, of the temperature, pressure and humidity are 0.05 C, 0.1 mmHg and 0.5 mmHg, respectively, and they have normal distributions, the resulting standard uncertainties, u 4 ( l ) ,

u 5 (l ) and u 6 ( l ) will be 1.6 10 8 Ld ,

1.2 10 8 Ld and 8.5 10 9 L d , respectively.
Similarly, the variances associated with and

Displacement (wavelength)

t 0 , p0

FIGURE 2. Nonlinearity of the interferometer Other uncertainties The correction of refractive index of air using the modified Edln equation has a relative uncertainty of 3 10 (2). The standard uncertainty is approximately
8

f 0 are given by
u (l ) = Ls 0.93 10
2 7 2 2 2 12

u (t 0 )
2

2 u8 (l ) = Ls 0.362 1012 u 2 ( p0 )

resulting

u (l ) = Ls 0.05 10
2 9 2

12

u ( f0 )

Since the dimensional change is negligibly small compared to the sample length, the environmental-induced uncertainties mainly arise from the correction of the dead-path error. For measurements in vacuum, these uncertainties can be neglected. Uncertainty of sample length The variance associated with the sample length in equation (6) is
2 u10 (l ) = [0.93(t t 0 ) 0.36( p p 0 )

u12 ( l ) = 2 3 10 8 Ls / 2 = 2.1 10 8 Ls
Combination of the uncertainties The sources of uncertainty and their contributions to the measurement uncertainty of the interferometer are summarized in Table 1. The combined standard uncertainty of the interferometer can be obtained by calculating the root-sum-square of the individual standard uncertainties. The combined standard uncertainty in the laboratory environment, where the temperature, pressure and humidity are 22.9 0.5 C, 747 5 mmHg and 40 20 %, is calculated and listed in the column of in air in the table. This interferometer is designed be operated in a vacuum chamber with the temperature control of 20 0.1 C. The combined standard uncertainty under such condition is also calculated and is listed in Table 1 in the column of in vacuum.

+ 0.05( f f 0 )] 2 10 12 u 2 ( Ls )
If the maximum changes in air temperature, pressure and humidity during the measurement are 1 C, 10 mmHg and 10 mmHg, respectively, the standard uncertainty estimated by the rootsum-square of these items is

u10 ( l ) = 3.8 10 6 u ( Ls )

TABLE 1. Summary of standard uncertainties of the interferometer for measurements of dimensional changes Standard uncertainty Source of uncertainty Wavelength stability Electronics Environment Temperature Pressure Humidity Initial temperature Initial pressure Initial humidity Edln equation Total Sample length Nonlinearity Dilatation measurement

u ( xi )
u ( ) u (k ) u (t ) u ( p) u( f ) u (t 0 ) u( p0 ) u( f 0 )
3.3 ppb 1 0.017 C 0.03 mmHg 0.17 mmHg 0.017 C 0.03 mmHg 0.17 mmHg

f xi

u i (l ) (nm)
In air 0.33 0.15 1.6 1.2 0.85 1.6 1.2 0.85 2.1 3.72 0 0 0.43 0.13 0.43 In vacuum 0.33 0.15

( Ls L )
0 K
0.93( L s L ) 10 6 0.36 ( L s L ) 10 6 0.05 ( L s L ) 10 6 0.93 L s 10 6 0.36 L s 10 6 0 .05 L s 10 6 2
3.8 10
1
6

1 .5 10 L s

u ( Ls )

0.033 mm 0.43 nm

u c (l ) =

u
i =1

12

2 i

(l )

3.8

0.6

CONCLUSIONS The analysis of uncertainty has shown that, although the dead-path lengths have been reduced to the sample length by the balanced interferometer design, the uncertainty associated with the correction for dead-path error is the most significant source of uncertainty for measurements in air. It is necessary to operate the interferometer in a vacuum chamber in order to achieve the proposed accuracy. Two key components for further improving the measurement accuracy of the interferometer in vacuum are to reduce the nonlinearity resulting from the optical mixing and to improve the stability of laser wavelength. It can be concluded that this double-pass interferometer should be able to measure dimensional changes with an uncertainty of 2 nm (3), which meets the accuracy requirement of the interferometric dilatometer.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0216420. The Center for Precision Metrology is supported as an NSF Industry/University Cooperative Center under Grant No. 0331950. REFERENCES [1] Ren D. Optical Measurements of Dimensional Instability. Ph.D dissertation. University of North Carolina at Charlotte. 2006. [2] Birch K, Downs M. An Updated Edln Equation for the Refractive Index of Air. Metrologia. 1993; 30: 155-162. [3] Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement. ISO. 1995. [4] Zhang L. Fiber-coupled Heterodyne Interferometer. Ph.D dissertation. University of North Carolina at Charlotte. 2003.