New Industrial Challenges for Optical Metrology as Autonomous Cars, Free-Space Optical Communication, and AR/VR Shape the Future
A portion of the optical manufacturing market is driven by consumer electronics such as smartphones, augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR) devices and automated driving via advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS). Integrated optics are more complex than they once were, creating challenges in design which complicate manufacturing and metrology.
As optical systems become more compact, for example, they present tighter space constraints and, in general, a corresponding reduction in back focal-length and enlargement of chief ray-angles. In addition, optical path geometrics may not be straight. In automotive applications, driver-assistance windshield cameras require high-quality polishing to ensure image sharpness. And as cheaper, plastic optics are used more widely in consumer electronics, manufacturers must be cautious of undesired birefringence effects. System and material challenges such as these, in turn, give rise to metrology challenges.
Metrology tools for today’s consumer electronic devices must be compatible with changing and demanding optical systems. Standard interferometers and modulation transfer function (MTF) benches are generally not powerful enough for applications demanding high-wavefront-error dynamic range or complex measurement interpretation. One feasible and tested tool is wavefront sensing. In this presentation, Benoit Wattellier outlines current challenges in optical metrology laboratories and how wavefront sensing can help to address them.
About the presenter
Benoit Wattellier, Ph.D., is CTO and CSO of PHASICS Corp., which he co-founded in 2003 with Marie Begoña Lebrun and Mathieu Cohen. Wattellier received his doctorate from École Polytechnique (France), for which he implemented one of the first adaptive optics loops on a high-power laser. He then worked to define the National Ignition Facility’s (NIF) short-pulse X-ray radiography beamlines at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. He has led the R&D team at PHASICS since its founding in 2003, and he has coordinated and participated in several research programs in laser and optical metrology, as well as in phase microscopy for biological and materials science applications.