Advances in calibration methods for micro- and nanoscale surfaces

Optical surface topography measuring instrument manufacturers often quote accuracies of the order of nanometres and claim that the instruments can reliably measure a range of surfaces with structures on the micro- to nanoscale. However, for many years there has been debate about the interpretation of the data from optical surface topography measuring instruments. Optical artefacts in the output data and a lack of a calibration infrastructure mean that it can be difficult to get optical instruments to agree with contact stylus instruments. In this paper, the current situation with areal surface topography measurements is discussed along with the ISO specification standards that are in draft form. An infrastructure is discussed whereby the ISO-defined metrological characteristics of optical instruments can be determined, but these characteristics do not allow the instrument to measure complex surfaces. Current research into methods for determining the transfer function of optical instruments is reviewed, which will allow the calibration of optical instruments to measure complex surfaces, at least in the case of weak scattering. The ability of some optical instruments to measure outside the spatial bandwidth limitation of the numerical aperture is presented and some general outlook for future work given.

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