Focal length measurement of a microlens-array by grating shearing interferometry.

Based on grating shearing interferometry, a simple technique is introduced for focal length measurements of a microlens-array (MLA). The measurement system is composed of a He-Ne laser, condenser, collimator, the MLA under testing, a Ronchi grating, and CCD sensor. The plane wavefront from the collimator is transformed to a spherical wavefront by the MLA, while the curvature center is at the focus. Interference stripes appear at the overlap between the zero-order and first-order diffractive patterns of the grating and are detected by the CCD sensor. By analyzing the period change of stripes, the focal length is determined after the defocus of the grating is calculated. To validate the feasibility, an experiment is performed. The measurement uncertainty is discussed and measurement accuracy was determined to be 2%.