3D surface topography from the specular lobe of scattered light

Scattered light from a surface contains a huge amount of information including surface slope, roughness, pattern, texture, etc. In this paper, the relationship between the intensity distribution of scattered light from a surface and the 3D surface topography will be investigated. From the geometrical point of view the intensity distribution of scattered light from a surface may be modelled with three components, the specular spike, specular lobe and diffuse lobe. In the situation when light is scattered from a relatively smooth surface whose roughness is much larger than the wavelength of the incident light, the scattered light intensity distribution will consist of only a diffuse lobe and a specular lobe, which are well described by a combination of the Lambertian and Torrance–Sparrow geometrical models. Based on the light scattering phenomenon, in this paper a scanning method capable of measuring the 3D surface topography with 500 mm scanning width, high scanning speed, and micron resolution is presented. The 3D topography measurement is implemented by using a linear photodiode array to measure scattered light intensity distribution at different angles against the surface normal. Then the specular lobe of the scattered light will be extracted at each scanning point to calculate the surface normal distribution. Sequentially, the 3D surface topography is obtained by using gradient integration techniques.