Manufacturing Metrology

Metrology is the science of measurement, which can be divided into three overlapping activities: (1) the definition of units of measurement, (2) the realization of units of measurement, and (3) the traceability of measurement units. Manufacturing metrology originally implicates the measurement of components and inputs for a manufacturing process to assure they are within specification requirements. It can also be extended to indicate the performance measurement of manufacturing equipment. This Special Issue covers papers revealing novel measurement methodologies and instrumentations for manufacturing metrology from the conventional industry to the frontier of the advanced hi-tech industry. Twenty-five papers are included in this Special Issue. These published papers can be categorized into four main groups, as follows: Length measurement: covering new designs, from micro/nanogap measurement with laser triangulation sensors and laser interferometers to very-long-distance, newly developed mode-locked femtosecond lasers. Surface profile and form measurements: covering technologies with new confocal sensors and imagine sensors: in situ and on-machine measurements. Angle measurements: these include a new 2D precision level design, a review of angle measurement with mode-locked femtosecond lasers, and multi-axis machine tool squareness measurement. Other laboratory systems: these include a water cooling temperature control system and a computer-aided inspection framework for CMM performance evaluation

Optical MEMS

Optical microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), microoptoelectromechanical systems (MOEMS), or optical microsystems are devices or systems that interact with light through actuation or sensing at a micro- or millimeter scale. Optical MEMS have had enormous commercial success in projectors, displays, and fiberoptic communications. The best-known example is Texas Instruments’ digital micromirror devices (DMDs). The development of optical MEMS was impeded seriously by the Telecom Bubble in 2000. Fortunately, DMDs grew their market size even in that economy downturn. Meanwhile, in the last one and half decade, the optical MEMS market has been slowly but steadily recovering. During this time, the major technological change was the shift of thin-film polysilicon microstructures to single-crystal–silicon microsructures. Especially in the last few years, cloud data centers are demanding large-port optical cross connects (OXCs) and autonomous driving looks for miniature LiDAR, and virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR) demands tiny optical scanners. This is a new wave of opportunities for optical MEMS. Furthermore, several research institutes around the world have been developing MOEMS devices for extreme applications (very fine tailoring of light beam in terms of phase, intensity, or wavelength) and/or extreme environments (vacuum, cryogenic temperatures) for many years. Accordingly, this Special Issue seeks to showcase research papers, short communications, and review articles that focus on (1) novel design, fabrication, control, and modeling of optical MEMS devices based on all kinds of actuation/sensing mechanisms; and (2) new developments of applying optical MEMS devices of any kind in consumer electronics, optical communications, industry, biology, medicine, agriculture, physics, astronomy, space, or defense

Research on profile compensation, on-machine metrology and precision monitoring of ultrahigh precision machining process using real-time position capture system

東京電機大学202

Contrast enhanced spectroscopic optical coherence tomography

A method of forming an image of a sample includes performing SOCT on a sample. The sample may include a contrast agent, which may include an absorbing agent and/or a scattering agent. A method of forming an image of tissue may include selecting a contrast agent, delivering the contrast agent to the tissue, acquiring SOCT data from the tissue, and converting the SOCT data into an image. The contributions to the SOCT data of an absorbing agent and a scattering agent in a sample may be quantified separately

Development and Characterization of a Dispersion-Encoded Method for Low-Coherence Interferometry

This Open Access book discusses an extension to low-coherence interferometry by dispersion-encoding. The approach is theoretically designed and implemented for applications such as surface profilometry, polymeric cross-linking estimation and the determination of thin-film layer thicknesses. During a characterization, it was shown that an axial measurement range of 79.91 µm with an axial resolution of 0.1 nm is achievable. Simultaneously, profiles of up to 1.5 mm in length were obtained in a scan-free manner. This marked a significant improvement in relation to the state-of-the-art in terms of dynamic range. Also, the axial and lateral measurement range were decoupled partially while functional parameters such as surface roughness were estimated. The characterization of the degree of polymeric cross-linking was performed as a function of the refractive index. It was acquired in a spatially-resolved manner with a resolution of 3.36 x 10-5. This was achieved by the development of a novel mathematical analysis approach

Biomedical Engineering

Biomedical engineering is currently relatively wide scientific area which has been constantly bringing innovations with an objective to support and improve all areas of medicine such as therapy, diagnostics and rehabilitation. It holds a strong position also in natural and biological sciences. In the terms of application, biomedical engineering is present at almost all technical universities where some of them are targeted for the research and development in this area. The presented book brings chosen outputs and results of research and development tasks, often supported by important world or European framework programs or grant agencies. The knowledge and findings from the area of biomaterials, bioelectronics, bioinformatics, biomedical devices and tools or computer support in the processes of diagnostics and therapy are defined in a way that they bring both basic information to a reader and also specific outputs with a possible further use in research and development

Development and Characterization of a Dispersion-Encoded Method for Low-Coherence Interferometry

This Open Access book discusses an extension to low-coherence interferometry by dispersion-encoding. The approach is theoretically designed and implemented for applications such as surface profilometry, polymeric cross-linking estimation and the determination of thin-film layer thicknesses. During a characterization, it was shown that an axial measurement range of 79.91 µm with an axial resolution of 0.1 nm is achievable. Simultaneously, profiles of up to 1.5 mm in length were obtained in a scan-free manner. This marked a significant improvement in relation to the state-of-the-art in terms of dynamic range. Also, the axial and lateral measurement range were decoupled partially while functional parameters such as surface roughness were estimated. The characterization of the degree of polymeric cross-linking was performed as a function of the refractive index. It was acquired in a spatially-resolved manner with a resolution of 3.36 x 10-5. This was achieved by the development of a novel mathematical analysis approach

A NEW METHOD OF WAVELENGTH SCANNING INTERFEROMETRY FOR INSPECTING SURFACES WITH MULTI-SIDE HIGH-SLOPED FACETS

With the development of modern advanced manufacturing technologies, the requirements for ultra-precision structured surfaces are increasing rapidly for both high value-added products and scientific research. Examples of the components encompassing the structures include brightness enhancement film (BEF), optical gratings and so forth. Besides, specially designed structured surfaces, namely metamaterials can lead to specified desirable coherence, angular or spatial characteristics that the natural materials do not possess. This promising field attracts a large amount of funding and investments. However, owing to a lack of effective means of inspecting the structured surfaces, the manufacturing process is heavily reliant on the experience of fabrication operators adopting an expensive trial-and-error approach, resulting in high scrap rates up to 50-70% of the manufactured items. Therefore, overcoming this challenge becomes increasingly valuable. The thesis proposes a novel methodology to tackle this challenge by setting up an apparatus encompassing multiple measurement probes to attain the dataset for each facet of the structured surface and then blending the acquired datasets together, based on the relative location of the probes, which is achieved via the system calibration. The method relies on wavelength scanning interferometry (WSI), which can achieve areal measurement with axial resolutions approaching the nanometre without the requirement for the mechanical scanning of either the sample or optics, unlike comparable techniques such as coherence scanning interferometry (CSI). This lack of mechanical scanning opens up the possibility of using a multi-probe optics system to provide simultaneous measurement with multi adjacent fields of view. The thesis presents a proof-of-principle demonstration of a dual-probe wavelength scanning interferometry (DPWSI) system capable of measuring near-right-angle V-groove structures in a single measurement acquisition. The optical system comprises dual probes, with orthogonal measurement planes. For a given probe, a range of V-groove angles is measurable, limited by the acceptance angle of the objective lenses employed. This range can be expanded further by designing equivalent probe heads with varying angular separation. More complicated structured surfaces can be inspected by increasing the number of probes. The fringe analysis algorithms for WSI are discussed in detail, some improvements are proposed, and experimental validation is conducted. The scheme for calibrating the DPSWI system and obtaining the relative location between the probes to achieve the whole topography is implemented and presented in full. The appraisal of the DPWSI system is also carried out using a multi-step diamond-turned specimen and a sawtooth brightness enhancement film (BEF). The results showed that the proposed method could achieve the inspection of the near-right-angle V-groove structures with submicrometre scale vertical resolution and micrometre level lateral resolution