US Patent 10942135 Radial polarizer for particle detection

A dark field inspection system may include an illumination source to generate an illumination beam, one or more illumination optics to direct the illumination beam to a sample at an off-axis angle along an illumination direction, a detector, one or more collection optics to generate a dark-field image of the sample on the detector based on light collected from the sample in response to the illumination beam, and a radial polarizer located at a pupil plane of the one or more collection optics, where the radial polarizer rejects light with radial polarization with respect to an apex point in the pupil plane corresponding to specular reflection of the illumination beam from the sample.