Characterization of diffractive relief structures over large areas by stitching interference microscopic topography.

• Multi-scale measurement of DOEs based on stitching interference microscopy. • Inherited advantages of high resolution and high accuracy. • Extended lateral range of measurement to 10 mm scale via subaperture stitching. • Simultaneous correction of 6-dof scanning motion error for seamless data fusion. • Full aperture fabrication error map obtained with undercut effect verification. The development of diffractive optical elements (DOEs)enables fascinatingly compact design and chromatic aberration correction. Fabrication errors of DOEs include periodic pattern error, relief profile error and roughness which affect imaging quality and diffraction efficiency. Characterization of the DOE requires thus multi-scale measurement of the surface topography over the full aperture of 10 mm scale. This paper presents a method based on the white light interferometry in combination of subaperture stitching. Firstly, the principle of measurement and subaperture layout design is introduced. The measuring system is easily set up by integrating a scanning platform with the interference microscope. Subaperture stitching algorithm is developed based on the surface height change related to the scanning motion error. The slope of the relief profile is used to model the deviations of overlapping point pairs induced by lateral shift and rotation. Finally, the topography and fabrication error of a Fresnel lens surface are experimentally obtained and characterized over the full aperture through stitching of totally 67 subapertures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]