A novel contact and non-contact hybrid profilometer

A novel hybrid measuring instrument, developed for the characterization of engineering surface, is presented. This instrument is capable of contact and non-contact measurement, and both measurement systems are based on a Linnik interference microscope. So the instrument has a lower cost compared with other counterparts. For the contact measurement, the vertical resolution is less than 1 nm, and for the non-contact measurement, better than 0.5 nm. This paper describes the system and its performance along with results of measuring various samples.