This thesis details the development and validation of a laser Doppler vibrometer-based measurement system that is capable of quantifying not only the normal vibration of a solid body but also the component of vibration that is parallel to the plane containing the surface of interest. LDV manufacturers produce various devices that capture 3D measurements in a beam configuration that can be used to decompose the measured signals into not only the normal velocity of the surface of an object but also two orthogonal in-plane components of the vibration. It was a slightly simplified two-dimensional version of this approach that was chosen for implementation in the Wave Physics Lab using individual components to create a cheaper, more flexible system than those produced by companies such as Polytec. The goal of this system is to facilitate the exploration and discovery of areas and applications where 2D measurement may provide a more complete and precise view of the physics of different phenomena. Upon completion of the system development and validation, a study was done that sought to measure the acoustoelastic effect in an Aluminum plate by measuring how increasing loads alter both the normal and in-plane components of Lamb wave propagation in the plate. The acoustoelastic effect is the effect of stress on wave speed caused by non-linearity in the propagation medium.

Metrology is the science of measurement. It is also a prerequisite for maintaining a high quality in all manufacturing processes. In this thesis we will present the demands and solutions for ultra-precision metrology in the manufacturing of lithography masks for the TV-display industry. The extreme challenge that needs to be overcome is a measurement uncertainty of 10 nm on an absolute scale of more that 2 meters in X and Y. Materials such as metal, ceramic composites, quartz or glass are highly affected by the surrounding temperature when tolerances are specified at nanometer levels. Also the fact that the refractive index of air in the interferometers measuring absolute distances is affected by temperature, pressure, humidity and CO2 contents makes the reference measurements really challenging. This goes hand in hand with the ability of how to design a mask writer, a pattern generator with a performance good enough for writing masks for the display industry with sub-micron accuracy over areas of square meters.  As in many other areas in the industry high quality metrology is the key for success in developing high accuracy production tools. The aim of this thesis is therefore to discuss the metrology requirements of mask making for display screens. Defects that cause stripes in the image of a display, the so called “Mura” effect, are extremely difficult to measure as they are caused by spatially systematic errors in the mask writing process in the range of 10-20 nm. These errors may spatially extend in several hundreds of mm and are superposed by random noise with significantly higher amplitude compared to the 10-20 nm.  A novel method for measuring chromium patterns on glass substrates will also be presented in this thesis. This method will be compared to methods based on CCD and CMOS images. Different methods have been implementedin the Micronic MMS1500 large area measuring machine, which is the metrology tool used by the mask industry, for verifying the masks made by the Micronic mask writers. Using alternative methods in the same system has been very efficient for handling different measurement situations. Some of  the discussed methods are also used by the writers for calibration purposes. / QC 20110517