Nondestructive metrology by optical coherence tomography empowering manufacturing iterations of layered polymeric optical materials

In recent years, there has been an ever-growing interest in exploring different optical materials and components to develop compact and effective optical systems. The design and fabrication of high-performance optics require nondestructive metrology techniques to inspect the samples. We have investigated the capability of optical coherence tomography (OCT) to nondestructively characterize layered polymeric materials. Using a custom developed Gabor-domain optical coherence microscopy system centered at 800 nm with 120 nm full width at half maximum enabling unprecedented 2 μm resolution both laterally and axially in an 8 mm 3 volume, we investigated the internal structure of 50 μm thick films and layered sheets, which prompted the manufacturing process to adopt a compatibilization technique. Based on a custom swept-source OCT system centered at 1320 nm with expanded imaging field-of-view and latest depth of imaging extended to ∼5 mm , we performed nondestructive metrology of the layer thickness profiles over the depth of a monolithic layered sheet and diagnosed a film compression issue within the sheet. With the OCT metrology, the manufacturing process has been advanced and the layer thickness profile of a recent layered gradient refractive index sheet shows improved uniformity through depth.