STR/04/038/PM

Optical Interferometric Inspection of Micro-Component Structures

I. Reading and S. H. Wang

Abstract In this report, the design of an optical interferometric system to measure the surface profile of micro-components is described. The proposed system achieves uniform monochromatic illumination over the test object and produces an interference fringe pattern localized near the surface. Both the interference fringes and the 2D image of the test surface can be simultaneously held in focus by an infinity microscope system consisting of an interference objective and a tube lens. Experimental results from a range of micro-components demonstrate that features of the order of nanometers are measurable. Measurements on standard steps also compare the accuracy of the proposed system to an existing commercial white-light interferometer and a stylus profilometer. Keywords: Optical interferometry, Phaseshifting, Surface profilometry, Fibre end-surface, Micro-components

the interferometer, the whole-field surface contour of a variety of different micro-components can be evaluated quantitatively through applying phase shifting techniques. The usefulness and feasibility of the proposed system for nano-scale deformation inspection is demonstrated and studied using several components representing different surface types and structures. 3 METHODOLOGY

Fig. 1 shows the optical configuration of the system.

BACKGROUND

Optical metrology plays a crucial role in the development and manufacturing of microcomponents arising in fields such as optical communications, microelectro(opto)-mechanical systems(M(O)EMS) and precision engineering. Knowledge of the surface contour and deformation of these micro-components provides important feedback for quality control, manufacturing process optimization and material property analysis [1-3]. A non-invasive system for characterizing out-of-plane deformations is therefore an essential part of the development of application-specific micro-components. The achievement of accurate measurements on such small and delicate structures, typically made from plastic/silicon materials, is challenging. Optical profilometry, which is non-contact by nature and capable of measurements ranging from nanometers to millimeters, stands out as a particularly practical measurement technology for these tasks. 2 OBJECTIVE

Fig. 1. The developed interferometric system.

In this report, a co-axial interference Mirau objective based interferometer is described. Using

It can be seen that the Mirau interference objective consists of a microscope objective lens, a reference mirror (flatness /20) and a plate beamsplitter. Similarly to the optical paths in a typical Michelson interferometer [4], two beams traveling along the optical axis and reflected from the reference and the test surface respectively are recombined to interfere with each other. Through a software package developed to quantitatively evaluate the resulting interferogram, the system can recover the surface profile and deformation of a range of surfaces forms. In the optical layout shown in Fig. 1, an illumination system, which consists of a halogen light bulb, lens 1, an iris diaphragm, lens 2, an interference filter and lens 3, is used to direct monochromatic light (centre wavelength = 650 nm) onto the

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test surface through a cube beamsplitter and the Mirau objective. As indicated by the solid line, a conjugated image of the light bulb is located at an infinite position when the light from the illumination system emerges from the objective. The test surface within the field of view of the objective is thus uniformly illuminated and the area of interest on the test surface can be adjusted by means of the iris diaphragm 2. The Mirau objective directs the beams reflected off the reference and the test surfaces onto a CCD sensor through a tube lens, which is shown as dashed lines between the objective and the CCD sensor. Since the reference and test surface are mounted along the same axis, the coaxial arrangement of two interference paths renders the system relatively insensitive to external vibration and air turbulence. The resulting interference fringe pattern is recorded by a CCD sensor (768 pixels 576 pixels) and the corresponding signal is digitised by a frame grabber for further processing with a computer. Note that the Mirau objective is mounted on a capacitive close-loop controlled PZT (Piezosystem Jena, actuator type: PX300CAP) with displacement resolution of less than 1 nm so as to enable phase shifting to be accurately implemented. The following section briefly outlines the fundamental data processing required. In phase shifting interferometry the phase distribution ( x, y ) is recovered from analysis of a set of four interference fringe intensity images recorded using the CCD camera at known relative positions:
A( x, y) = I1 ( x, y ) + I 2 ( x, y) cos ( x, y ) , B( x, y ) = I1 ( x, y ) I 2 ( x, y ) sin ( x, y ) ,
C ( x, y ) = I1 ( x, y ) I 2 ( x, y ) cos ( x, y ) ,

in the calculated phase. In order to obtain the actual phase profile, the phase discontinuities can be unwrapped by adding or subtracting multiples of 2 to a pixel until the difference between it and its adjacent pixel is less than . Once the phase profile ( x, y ) has been determined across the interference field on the twodimensional CCD array, the actual height distribution, h( x, y ) , on the test surface is given by
h ( x, y ) =

( x, y ) .

(6)

The interference fringe pattern results from two overlapped beams originating from the reference mirror and the test surface. In order to detect the test surface quality, the reference mirror, acting as a standard block, has a high quality flat surface (flatness /20). If the quality of the test surface is similar to that of the reference mirror, the resulting fringes will form a linear pattern with density adjustable by the relative position of the reference mirror and test surfaces. Hence any distortion in the interference fringes indicates a local profile/contour of the test surface. In the measurement process four interferogram frames are recorded and analyzed to demodulate the geometrical profile of each test surface. 4 4.1 RESULTS & DISCUSSION Single fiber end-surface

(1) (2) (3) (4)

Figs. 2(a) to 2(d) show the resulting interference fringe pattern on a fiber connector end-surface consisting of a ceramic ferrule with a single central fiber of diameter 125 m. Each circular fringe pattern represents a contour of the surface which corresponds to additional phase angles of 0, 90, 180 and 270, respectively. Figs. 2(e) to 2(f) show the corresponding wrapped and unwrapped phase maps. Fig. 2(g) shows the variation of a cross-section through the wrapped phase map. It can be seen that the phase changes in a saw-tooth pattern which is in correspondence with the intensity of the fringe pattern, i.e., it is in the range from 0 to 2 with the same period as the fringes in the Fig. 2(a). To retrieve the continuous profile of the test surface phase-unwrapping is implemented. Fig. 2(h) shows an unwrapped phase cross-section which represents the shape of the test surface directly. It is noted that the smooth and continuous change in the curve in Fig. 2(h) indicates that the phase-shifting employed in the equipment has been properly implemented by achiev-

D ( x, y ) = I1 ( x, y ) + I 2 ( x, y ) sin ( x, y ) .

where A(x,y), B(x,y), C(x,y) and D(x,y) represent the interference light intensities corresponding to phase-shifting steps of 0, /2, and 3/2 which can be obtained by moving reference mirror through displacements in /8, /4, and 3 /8, respectively. Solving Eqs. (1) to (4), the phase map (x, y ) of a test surface is given by:

(x, y ) = arctan B( x, y ) D( x, y ) .
A( x, y ) C ( x, y )

(5)

Because Eq. (5) has the phase wrapped to modulo 2, there may be discontinuities present

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ing an accurate demodulation of the phase distribution and subsequent recovery of the test surface profile.

Fig. 3. (a) 3D plot of the fiber-end surface, (c) a closeup of the fiber-end surface, (c) 2D plot along the Xaxis and (d) 2D plot along the Y-axis.

Fig. 2. Fringe pattern with phase shifts corresponding to (a) 0, (b) 90, (c) 180, (d) 270, (e) wrapped phase map, (f) unwrapped phase map, (g) and (h) a cross-section of the wrapped and unwrapped phase maps, respectively.

Fig. 4. (a) Interference fringe pattern resulting from an asymmetric fiber-end surface, (b) 3D plot of the fiberend surface, (c) 2D plot along the X-axis and (d) 2D plot along the Y-axis.

Fig. 3(a) shows a 3D plot of a fibre-end surface determined using the fringe patterns of Fig. 2. It can be seen that the fiber surface protrudes from the ferrule. This indicates that, in this case, the polishing process applied to the fiber-end connector has removed less material from the fiber area however in some samples it is found to sit up to 50nm below the ferrule. Fig. 3(b) shows a close-up of the protruding fiber-end surface and a chip on the fiber can be clearly identified at the front edge. Figs. 3(c) and 3(d) show two cross-sectional profiles across the centre of the fibre along the X and Y axes, respectively. The protrusions of the fibre above the ferrule can be readily determined and lie in the sub-micrometer range. The average radius (R) of the profile can be determined using several points and applying a LMS spherical fit.

Fig. 4 shows measurement of an example of an asymmetrical fiber-end surface. The resulting distorted fringe pattern in Fig. 4(a) indicates that the surface of the ferrule is non-symmetrical, which is also supported by the 3D plot and 2D plots shown in Figs. 4(b) to 4(d). As can be seen in Figs. 4(c) and 4(d), the fibre-end surface is not located symmetrically with respect to the mounting ferrules surface. This poor concentricity of the fiber with respect to the ferrule would cause large insertion losses if it were mated/coupled to another connector. 4.2 Comparison testing

To demonstrate the accuracy of the equipment, a standard grating with a rectangular groove of 80 nm depth and a pitch of 50 m was measured and a 3D plot of the results is shown in Fig. 5(a). A 2D plot of a cross section along the Xdirection is also shown in Fig. 5(b). Comparing

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with results (as shown in Fig. 5(c)) obtained by a conventional stylus Talysurf profilometer (Model: Taly-form Series 2), it is seen that there is very good agreement between the two methods, in which corresponding discrepancy as a percentage error is less than 1%.

Fig. 6. (a) A phase map of number 4, (b) 3D plot of number 4, (c) and (d) 2D plot of cross-sections of the number 4.

Fig. 7. Number 4 measured results from (a) Wyko VSI mode and (b) Wyko PSI mode.

5
Fig. 5. (a) 3D perspective plot of a grating and comparison of a cross-section profile of the grating step measured by (b) the proposed method (c) the stylus method.

CONCLUSION

To verify the accuracy further, a number 4 of a size of the order of microns was used as a test sample. The results obtained by using the prototype and a Wyko profilometer (Model: Wyko NT 3300 profiler) are shown in Figs. 6 and 7. As indicated in Figs. 6(c) and (d), Figs. 7(a) and 7(b), the discrepancy in the height measured by the prototype and the commercial instruments is less than 2%.

In this report the use of optically based interferometric techniques for micro-component inspection has been demonstrated. A prototype system, based on a modified Michelson interferometric configuration Mirau objective arrangement, has been built and used to measure the surface geometry of various microcomponents. The experimental results obtained compare favourably with those referenced to standard calibration steps and demonstrate that surface profile measurement can be carried out with an accuracy of the order of nanometers. The systems main advantageous characteristics are that it is whole-field, non-destructive and flexible in its

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range of applications. The proposed technique would also be well suited to the surface measurement of MEMS devices. 6 INDUSTRIAL SIGNIFICANCE

[2]

The work presented in this report has illustrated the development of a competence in the highaccuracy, automated inspection of the geometrical structure of micro-components. The advantages of this technology mean that it is suitable for application-specific adaptation to a wide range of manufacturing inspection tasks in the precision engineering field. REFERENCES [1] C.J. Tay, S.H. Wang, C. Quan and H.M. Shang, Optical Measurement of Youngs Modulus of A Micro-beam, Optics & Laser Tech., Vol. 32(5), pp. 329-333, (2000).

[3]

[4]

S.H. Wang, C.J. Tay, C. Quan and H.M. Shang, Determination of deflection and Youngs modulus of a micro-beam by means of interferometry, Measurement Sci. & Tech., Vol. 12(8), pp. 1279-1286, (2000). L.M. Zhang, D. Uttamchandani and B. Culshaw, Measurement of the mechanical-properties of silicon microresonators, Sensors and Actuators A, Vol. 29(1), pp. 79-84, (1991). S.H. Wang, C.G. Quan, C.J. Tay, I. Reading and Z.P. Fang, Measurement of a fiber-end surface profile using phase-shifting laser interferometry, Applied Optics, Vol. 43(1), pp.49-56, (2004).

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