Patent ID: 7221458

Claim:
A method for determining the object microrelief and optical properties of the surface layer, including the steps of: performing a polarization modulation; splitting an input coherent, monochromatic polarized light flux into an object light beam exposing the object field through a microlens unit, and a reference light beam; performing a phase modulation of the reference beam; performing an interference mixing of the light beams; extracting two mutually orthogonal polarization components and obtaining an interferogram; positioning a pixel of said interferogram; converting an average illumination of said pixel into respective modulation signals; measuring an amplitude and phase of a variable component and a value of a constant component of a modulation signal of the respective modulation signals; calculating phase, amplitude and a polarization parameter of light falling onto the pixel from the object beam; calculating the object microrelief and optical material constants of the surface layer of the object, calculation results being held on a computer readable medium; wherein: simultaneously with the step of splitting the light flux into the object and reference beams, light flux intensity is redistributed between the object and reference beams; thereafter, polarization modulation is performed separately for the object beam and the reference beam; object field exposure is performed by passing the object beam through a front surface of a frontal lens of the microlens unit; before the step of measuring, a preliminary ratio of illumination between the reference and object beams is established, and preliminary phase and amplitude values of the object beam light falling onto the pixel being calculated; after repeating the operation for a set of pixels, a step of equalizing illumination of one pixel by the object and reference beams is performed by redistributing intensity of the object and reference beams; thereafter, phase and amplitude of a variable component and a value of a constant component of the modulation signal is measured and refined phase and amplitude values of the object beam light falling on the pixel is calculated.