Evaluation and application of spatial light modulators for optical metrology

The continued miniaturization and the increased demands on the quality of industrial products stimulates the search for new approaches with enhanced resolution, fast response and improved reliability. Optical metrology systems often reach their limits in terms of resolution, dynamic range or speed. Here active approaches provide a new degree of flexibility with respect to the robust solution of identification problems such as the recognition and interpretation of internal material faults and the reconstruction of dimensional data from modulated intensity distributions. Sophisticated light switches, light valves and spatial light modulators have become meanwhile key components with respect to an active control of all relevant parameters of a wavefront. This contribution describes several types of modern SLMs, methods for their characterization and some recent applications.