3-D Optical Interference Microscopy at the Lateral Resolution

For applications in micro- and nanotechnologies the lateral resolution of optical 3-D microscopes becomes an issue of increasing relevance. However, lateral resolution of 3-D microscopes is hard to define in a satisfying way. Therefore, we first study the measurement capabilities of a highly resolving white-light interference (WLI) microscope close to the limit of lateral resolution. Results of measurements and simulations demonstrate that better lateral resolution seems to be achievable based on the envelope evaluation of a WLI signal. Unfortunately, close to the lateral resolution limit errors in the measured amplitude of micro-structures appear. On the other hand, results of interferometric phase evaluation seem to be strongly low-pass filtered in this case. Furthermore, the instrument transfer characteristics and the lateral resolution capabilities of WLI instruments are also affected by polarization. TM polarized light is less sensitive to edge diffraction and thus systematic errors can be avoided. However, apart from ghost steps due to fringe order errors, the results of phase evaluation seem to be closer to the real surface topography if TE polarized light is used. The lateral resolution can be further improved by combining WLI and structured illumination microscopy. Since the measured height of rectangular profiles close to the lateral resolution limit is generally too small compared to the real height, we introduce a method based on phase evaluation which characterizes the heights of barely laterally resolved rectangular gratings correctly.