Electronic speckle pattern interferometry on a microscopic scale

An electronic speckle pattern interferometer that incorporates a commercial, long-working-distance microscope is described which provides new opportunities to perform nondestructive inspection for applications in fields such as microelectronics. The long-working-distance microscrope was attached directly to the CCD camera to form a compact, portable system with a field of view that was variable over several mm in width. Alignment was greatly simplified because the skewed Michelson interferometer configuration used a speckled reference beam imaged from a diffusely reflecting reference surface that was positioned adjacent to the test object. To demonstrate the performance of the micro-ESPI instrument, fringe patterns were recorded for the quasi-static cantilever deflection of a 1 mm-wide interconnect clip from an electronics socket.