Final Report Summary - SURFUND (Fundaments and Principles for Measurement and Characterization of 21st Century Science and Engineering Surfaces) In many industries the shape of the surfaces in manufactured objects are becoming more complicated having almost any designed shape and often no symmetries at all (the latter are termed freeform shapes). As technology develops the need for surfaces with defined patterns becomes ever more important. Optics systems (e.g. ELT telescope, high-power-laser energy systems), energy-efficient jet engines, human-joint implants, solar panels, microelectronics and nanotechnology applications, all require the ability to make and measure these surfaces to a very high precision. Many of these surfaces have up to 1 or 2 meter size with the need of one part in 10^8 surface accuracy. Others feature very accurate structures, but are small in size and work under extreme environmental conditions.The project explored the new fundaments and principles for measuring and characterizing ultra/nano-precision non-planar geometric and deterministic surfaces to provide novel state-of-the-art technologies for 21st century science – pure and applied, engineering and bio-engineering. The first key challenge was how to represent and characterize non-planar surface. Traditionally measured surfaces have been represented as a set of height values over a plane with established analysis methods. In freeform surfaces the underlying domain is no longer a plane and contains points that have a designed non-zero curvature; such surfaces are also called non-planar surfaces. Surfaces with different curvature cannot be mapped into each other without distortion or loss of some surface information and can no longer be represented using height values over a plane. During the Surfund project, an investigation into the types of discrete and continuous surface representations for non-planar geometries was carried out. As a result mathematical models based on triangular meshes with apex normals were created. A set of non-planar surface analysis tools: PDE based Gaussian, Morphology and Wavelet filtration, as well as projection-based parametric techniques were originated to accommodate the non-planar representations. A Morphological Component Analysis was realized to characterize different type of features on structured surfaces. An Anisotropic nonlinear diffusion filter was created to de-noise MEM surfaces, for which the smoothed geometrical features, i.e. line width, step height etc., remained undistorted. The second key challenge was how to resolve these surface measurement and quality control problems. It required embedding measurement with non-contact, high speed, ease of use, nanometre accuracy with millimetre range, and with affordable costs. Five new fundaments and principles of sensors and instruments derived from multi-disciplinary research were originated and their enabling technologies created, including a miniaturized optical chip interferometer, a dispersed reference interferometer, a novel wavelength scanning interferometer and two single-shot optical systems, a white-light channelled spectrum interferometry, and a dispersive short coherence interferometer, Together they provide much better measurement technologies than embedded metrology today. The knowledge and technologies developed during Surfund have been disseminated to academic and industry through international/national conferences, published in refereed technical journals, patents filed and technology demonstrations have taken place in national facilities and some of the technologies are being commercialized. The Surfund research has also built up an initial basis for international standardization of freeform and defined pattern surfaces. The types of the industries interested in the research (optics, aerospace, automotive, precision engineering, electronics, instrumentations, national metrology institutes and bio-industry), means that the project’s novel measurement technologies will have significant economic benefits to Europe and social benefits to end users worldwide.
