A new method for measuring the thickness and shape of a thin film simultaneously by combining interferometry and laser triangulation

摘要

A new method has been developed to simultaneously measure the thickness and shape of a thin film, such as a dragonfly wing. The innovation in the method is the combining of a heterodyne interferometer and a laser triangulation displacement sensor into one optical system. We confirmed the accuracy of the method by measuring the displacement of a glass plate and the thickness variation generated by a rotated glass plate. The system has a relative accuracy of 1% in the shape measurement and 1.3% in the thickness variation measurement. The method was then applied to a dragonfly wing. The results indicated that the method is very effective in biomechanics studies, such as evaluating the flight performance of dragonflies. In such evaluations, it is essential to measure with high accuracy the variations in both shape and thickness of the wing simultaneously.