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Construction and Validation of a White Light Interferometer

White light interferometry is a well-developed and very old technique for optical measurements. The thesis describes the design of a vertical scan interferometer system to study the surface topography of surfaces down to nanometers. The desired properties of the system are its simplicity, portability and compact size, making it suitable for use in general labs and for educational purposes. By acquiring a sequence of images of the deformed fringe pattern, the surface topography can be observed, giving greater understanding of the surface roughness. The principle behind the system is coherence peak sensing where the resulting fringe pattern of the object gets changed in accordance with its surface topography. To accomplish this, individual components of the interferometer were studied and a prototype was built in the lab. A series of experiments were performed which validate the working of the system. The results of the validation which are produced in the report give the accuracy of the system. The output from the prototype interferometer is processed by MATLAB to decode the surface topography of the object under measurement. The design of the prototype is also discussed. Possible application of this device for sensing the surface topography of a cylindrical object is also put forward. Even-though the white light interferometer is more common, making them simple and cost effective will be more advantageous for the whole research community.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hh-14378
Date January 2011
CreatorsSathiamoorthy, Karthick, Ahmed, Tanjim
PublisherHögskolan i Halmstad, Sektionen för Informationsvetenskap, Data– och Elektroteknik (IDE), Högskolan i Halmstad, Sektionen för Informationsvetenskap, Data– och Elektroteknik (IDE)
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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