Nanometer profile measurement of large aspheric optical surface by scanning deflectometry with rotatable devices: Uncertainty propagation analysis and experiments

► We propose a new method on large aspheric optical surface measurement. ► We analyse the uncertainty propagation of proposed method. ► We design an experimental setup. ► We measure a spherical concave mirror with large slope. ► We get measurement repeatability (standard deviation) of 20 nm in room temperature. High-accuracy mirrors and lenses with large dimensions are widely used in huge telescopes and other industrial fields. Interferometers are widely used to measure near flat surfaces and spherical optical surfaces because of their high accuracy and high efficiency. Scanning deflectometry is also used for measuring optical near flat surfaces with sub-nanometer uncertainty. However, for measuring an aspheric surface with a large departure from a perfect spherical surface, both of these methods are difficult to use. The key problem for scanning deflectometry is that high-accuracy autocollimators usually have a limited measuring range less than 1000″, so it cannot be used for measuring surfaces having a large slope. We have proposed a new method for measuring large aspheric surfaces with large slopes based on a scanning deflectometry method in which rotatable devices are used to enlarge the measuring range of the autocollimator. We also proposed a method to connect the angle data which is cut by the rotation of the rotatable devices. An analysis of uncertainty propagation in our proposed method was done. The result showed that when measuring a large aspheric surface with a diameter over 300 mm and a slope of 10 arc-deg, the uncertainty was less than 10 nm. For the verification of our proposed method, experimental devices were set up. A spherical optical mirror with a diameter of 35 mm and curvature radius of 5000 mm was measured. The measuring range of the autocollimator was successfully enlarged by our proposed method. Experimental results showed that the average standard deviation of 10 times measurement was about 20 nm.