Improvement in the performance of white light interferometry system

White light interferometry (WLI) is a main non-contact optical technique to measure the topography and roughness of 3D surfaces with a high accuracy of a few nm. Mitutoyo has developed its own WLI platform. For precise measurements, the sample must remain still, which is a difficult requirement to fulfill, as, the sample stage can often pick up vibrations from its surroundings, significantly affecting the performance. This becomes even more serious, for a large area 3D topography, where several heightmaps need to be stitched. We have developed a new algorithm robust against the vibration of the sample stage under specified conditions. This algorithm eliminates the need for additional hardware such as vibration dampeners and thus is cost-effective. The output of this new algorithm results in an equal quality surface roughness for the continuous surfaces as the existing algorithm. For samples with large steps, step heights values are within 1 % of the corresponding no-vibration conditions original algorithm results. These results together will this new algorithm will be discussed in the manuscript.