Methods for on-line testing of characteristics of diffractive and conformal optical elements during the manufacturing process

Development of dedicated methods for nondestructive testing of microstructured optical elements is a prerequisite for the wide-scale manufacturing of diffractive, micro-optical and conformal elements. A variety of approaches to the characterization of diverse types of microstructured optical elements were developed at the laboratory of Diffractive Optics at IAE SB RAS. These methods are intended to test wavefront errors, etch depth and diffraction efficiency during and after the manufacturing of elements with binary and multi-level surface profile. The review of the developed techniques and measuring circuits given in the work takes into account specific features of the elements' parameters and application areas. Testing results for the manufactured elements are discussed.