Measurement of displacement using phase shifted wedge plate lateral shearing interferometry

•Interferometric technique for measurement of displacement.•Technique is based on Wedge plate Lateral Shearing Interferometry and Phase shifting technique.•Simple experimental arrangement with minimum interferometric noise.•The technique can be used for measurements of step height, profile, etc.

In present communication, a simple technique for measurement of displacement using phase shifted wedge plate lateral shearing interferometry is described. The light beam from laser is expanded and illuminates a wedge plate of relatively large angle. Light transmitted through the wedge plate is converged onto a reflecting specimen using a focusing lens. Back-reflected wavefront from the specimen is incident on the wedge plate. Because of the tilt and shear of the wavefront reflected from the wedge plate, typical straight line fringes appear. These fringes are superimposed onto a sinusoidal grating forming a moiré pattern. The orientation of the moiré fringes is a function of specimen displacement. Four step phase shifting test procedure has been incorporated by translating the grating in phase steps of π/2. Necessary mathematical formulation to establish correlation between the ‘difference phase’ and the displacement of the specimen surface is undertaken. The technique is automatic and provides resolution and expanded uncertainty of 1 µm and 0.246 µm, respectively. Detailed uncertainty analysis is also reported.