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Optical surface microtopography

using phase-shifting Nomarski
microscope

Shimada, Wataru, Sato, Tadamitu, Yatagai, Toyohiko

Wataru Shimada, Tadamitu Sato, Toyohiko Yatagai, "Optical surface

microtopography using phase-shifting Nomarski microscope," Proc. SPIE
1332, Optical Testing and Metrology III: Recent Advances in Industrial Optical
Inspection, (1 January 1991); doi: 10.1117/12.51058

Event: 34th Annual International Technical Symposium on Optical and

Optoelectronic Applied Science and Engineering, 1990, San Diego, CA,
United States

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 Special Paper

Optical Surface Microtopography Using Phase-Shifting Nomarski

Microscope
Watani Shimada, Tadamitu Sato and Toyohiko Yatagai
University of Tsukuba
Institute of Applied Physics
Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305, Japan

Abstract
The use of the phase shifting interferometric technique is discussed to make quantitative surface profiling
using the Nomarski differential interference microscope. Lateral shift of the Nomarski prism introduces
mutual phase shift between interfering two wavefronts with small amount of shear. Since the analyzed
phase distribution corresponds to the differential of the surface profile under test, integration of the phase
distribution gives the correct surface topography. The procedure for an analysis method and experimental
results are presented.

1. INTRODUCTION
Recently optical methods of measuring the surface roughness have been described by many
th1 Optical scattering techniques are are known as a standard method of evaluating polished
surfaces.1 Interferomethc techniques including the heterodyne method,2 the phase shifting method,3 the
FECO(Fringes of Equal Chromatic Order) method,4 and so on, provides for a new class of surface
roughness measurement techniques. That is noncontact and 2-D.

The Nomarski differential interference microscope5 has been used as an extremely sensitive and
qualitative evaluation tool of surface roughness. Lessor et al described the quantitative surface topography
based on the Nomarski microscope.6'7 As well known, the Nomarski microscope gives us an information
on the surface slope. They integrated one-dimentionally the measured surface slope distribution to obtain 1-
D surface profile.

In the present paper, we present the phase shifting Nomarski microscope system and an algorithm
for calculation 2-D surface shape of the test object.

2. NOMARSKI MICROSCOPE AND PHASE SHIFTING

The Nomarski differential interference microscope provides for the interference pattern between
two object images which are slightly offset from each other. The interference pattern is considered to be the
differential of the object under the condition that an amount of the offset is smaller than the spatial
resolution of the microscope. To make such a small offset, polarizing elements are used. Figure 1 shows a
schematic diagram of the Nomarski microscope. The Nomarski prism separates beams polarlized in and
perpendicular to the plane of the paper, and shears these beams. The objective lens produces two
illumination beams sheared each c*her along the shear direction. The Nomarski prism recombines the
reflected images collinearly, so as to make an interference pattern. The intensity distribution of the
interference pattern is given by

I(x,y) = I 1 +V co 2k
aX
s+
(1)

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 where h(x,y) denotes the surface shape of the object, s an amount of shear and 4 the optical path
difference. The optical path difference is changed by displacing the Nomarski prism along the shear
direction.

Analyzer

Polarizer

Object
Fig.1 Schematic of differential interference microscope.

Since the bias phase is changeable due to the prism movement, then we can use the phase shifting
fringe analysis technique to evaluate of the derivative of the surface shape to the shear direction, that is,
the x-direction. By the same procedure, we obtain the shape derivative in the y-direction. From the
derivatives to the shear directions, we can calculate a 2-D distribution of the surface shape.

prism
Object

Fig. 2 Schematic setup of the phase shifting microscope system.

526 / SPIE Vol. 1332 Optical Testing and Metrology ill: Recent Advances in Industrial Optical Inspection (1990)

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 Figure 2 shows the schematic setup of the phase shifting microscope system. The Nomarski prism
mounted on a stepping motor stage controlled by a computer with 1 m resolution.Differential
interferograms are detected by a Hamamatsu C100TV camera. A video signal is converted to an 8-bit
digital signal and stored in the frame memory of the Hamamatsu C1901 with 512x512x16 bit resolution.
To accumulate a maximum of 256 frames, 16-bit resolution is desired to reduce statistical noise in the video
signal. These image data are processed by a VAX 750 computer system.
3. FRINGE ANALYSIS AND 2-D SHAPE CALCULATION
3.1 Data analysis software system
To make automatic data analysis and evaluation, we developed a software system whose flow
diagram is shown in Fig. 3. In the first step, a series of interferograms with different nutual phase are
stored in a computer memory. Next, the phase of each interferogram is calculated according the phase
shifting algorithm. Since the calculated phase is wrapped between -ir and it, the wrapped phase distribution
should be unwrapped to correct phase distribution. By rotating the Nomarski prism at an angle of 90, the
derivative of the surface shape to the direction normal to the first measurement is measured.

Next, a shape profile for each direction is calculated from the phase distribution corresponding to
the first derivative by numerical spatial integration. This process removes the tilt phase term because the
optical elements tilt to the optical axis is unknown. The final step is a reconstruction of the 2-D object shape
from the two-direction profiles obtained above.

Fig. 3 Flow diagram of fringe analysis.

3.2 2-D shape reconstruction

We describe here two approaches to reconstruct a 2-D shapefrom two derivative distributions in
the x- and y-directions; a sectional shape method8 and a direct least-square method.9 In the sectional shape

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 method, we integrate the derivative in the x-direction and the derivative in the y-direction to obtain 1-D
sectional shape as follows:

J4x,y)= (dx
J ax (2)
and

x,y= 1dy
J ay (3)

Fig. 4 Differential interferogram with different mutual phase.

Next, a 2-D distribution function is reconstructed by moving each sectional shape for one direction up and
down to fit the central sectional shape of the other direction. The least-square error estimation method can
be used to obtain optimum values of moving up and down.
In the direct least-square error estimation method, the measured 1-D differences of the object shape
with a random noise is fed to a 2-D derivative.
3.3 Measurement example
Figure 4 shows differential interference micrograms with different bias phases. The object under
test is a computer-generated hologram recorded on a photoregist-coated glass plate. Figure 5 shows a
surface shape of the object.

528 / SPIE Vol. 1332 Optical Testing and Metrology ill: Recent Advances in Industrial Optical Inspection (1990)

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 Fig. 5 Surface shape of the object measured by the present method.

4. CONCLUSION
We have developed a quantitative differential interference microscope system in which the phase
bias is modified by shifting the Nomarski prism and the phase derivative is estimated by the phase shifting
technique. Finally 2-D phase reconstruction methods from 1-D phase derivatives are presented.

5. ACKNOWLEDEGEMENTS
The authors thank Yoshio Kano of Ricoh Co. for his helpful discussion and support. This research
was partially supported by the Scientific Research Grant-in-Aid from the Ministry of Education, Science
and Culture, and Amada Foundation.
6. REFERNCES
1. H. E. Bennett and J. 0. Porteus, "Relation between surface roughness and specular reflectance at
normal incidence," J. Opt. Soc. Amer., 51, 123(1961).
2. G. E. Sommargren, "Optical Heterodyne Profilometry," Appl. Opt., 20, 610 (1981).
3.
4. J. M. Bennett, "Measurement of the rms Roughness, Autocovariance Function and Other Statistical
Properties ofOptical Surfaces Using a FEW Scanning Interferometer," Appl. Opt., 15, 2705 (1976).
5. M. Francon, Progress in Microscopy, Pergamon Press, p. 199 (1961).
6. D. L. Lessor, J. S. Hartman and R. L. Gordon, "Quantitative surface topography determination by
Nomarski reflection microscopy. I. Theory," J. Opt. Soc. Amer., 69, 357 (1979).
7. J. S. Hartman, R. L. Gordon and D. L. Lessor, "Quantitative surface topography determination by
Nomarski reflection microscopy. 2: Microscope modification, calibration, and planar sample experiments,"
Appl. Opt., 19, 2998 (1980).
8. K. Omura and T. Yatagai, "Phase measuring Ronchi test," Appl. Opt., 27, 523 (1988).
9. D. C. Ghiglia and L. A. Romero, "Direct phase estimation from phase differences using fast elliptic
partial differential equation solvers," Opt. Lett., 14, 1 107 (1989).

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