Abstract

We report on a novel procedure to measure the linewidth of steep microstructures, based on the polarization anisotropy caused by the structure edges. A liquid-crystal phase shifter and a polarizer are introduced into the imaging optics of a reflection-mode microscope. We apply the principle of phase-shifting interferometry to measure the phase and contrast of a TM-polarized image with the TE-polarized image as reference. The method provides selective edge detection because the polarization difference is localized at the structure edges.

© 1999 Optical Society of America

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