In situ aberration measurement technique based on an aerial image with an optimized source

An in situ aberration measurement technique based on an aerial image with an optimized source is proposed. A linear relationship between the aerial image and Zernike coefficients is established by the principal components and regression matrices, which are obtained in a modeling process through principal component analysis (PCA) and regression analysis. The linear relationship is used to extract Zernike aberrations from the measured aerial image in a retrieval process. The characteristics of regression matrix are analyzed, and the retrieval process of Zernike coefficients is optimized. An evaluation function for the measurement accuracy of Zernike aberrations is proposed, and then a fast procedure to optimize the illumination source is designed. Parameters of the illumination source are optimized according to the evaluation function and applied in our method. The simulators Dr.LiTHO and PROLITH are used to validate the method. Compared to the previous aberration measure ment technique based on principal component analysis of an aerial image (AMAI-PCA), the number terms of Zernike coefficients that can be measured are increased from 7 to 27, and the measurement accuracy of Zernike aberrations is improved by more than 20%.