Metrology
The manufacturing of precision optical components requires state of the art metrology. At PPC, we have developed advanced methods to measure the optical properties of our devices because measurement is fundamental to everything we do. Whether testing reflectivity to 99.99%, verifying parallelism to less than 0.1 arc seconds or actually certifying the maximum energy thresholds of our coatings, we believe that the numbers don’t lie. PPC also partners with universities and national laboratories to access the most advanced measurement tools in order to provide you with the most accurate and complete information available.
Examples of some of our in-house capabilities are shown here.
PPC Thickness measurements taken with our NIST traceable SW1500 tunable laser spectrum analyzer confirm total thickness variations (TTV) as low as 11 nm across a 68 mm diameter—a parallelism of less than <.05 arcseconds! Such precision requires meticulous integration of metrology within the manufacturing process.
Transmitted wavefront distortion (TWD) through a 12.7 mm beamsplitter cube taken over a clear aperture of 85%. The data shows a wavefront error of less than λ/20 peak-to-valley and less than λ/100 RMS at 633 nm.
Differential Interference Contrast Microscopy (DICM) Image of a 6 Angstrom silicon surface. The method shown here is also known as Nomarski imaging. It is the primary tool used for characterizing sub-Angstrom surfaces.