Terahertz thickness determination with interferometric vibration correction for industrial applications

In many industrial fields, like automotive and painting industry, the thickness of thin layers is a crucial parameter for quality control. Hence, the demand for thickness measurement techniques continuously grows. In particular, non-destructive and contact-free terahertz techniques access a wide range of thickness determination applications. However, terahertz time-domain spectroscopy based systems perform the measurement in a sampling manner, requiring fixed distances between measurement head and sample. In harsh industrial environments vibrations of sample and measurement head distort the time-base and decrease measurement accuracy. We present an interferometer-based vibration correction for terahertz time-domain measurements, able to reduce thickness distortion by one order of magnitude for vibrations with frequencies up to 100Hz and amplitudes up to 100 mu m. We further verify the experimental results by numerical calculations and find very good agreement. (C) 2018 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement