A method is disclosed for manufacturing a chip-scale optics module for an optical interrogator. The method includes aligning a polarization axis of a linear polarizer to an angle of 45 degrees from a fast axis of a quarter wave plate to enable circular polarization of a beam, when a beam is introduced to the linear polarizer, coupling the linear polarizer to the quarter wave plate after the aligning to form a circular polarizing filter sheet and then dicing the circular polarizing filter sheet to obtain a plurality of chip-scale circular polarizing filters. Each of the chip-scale circular polarizing filters is diced to have an edge that defines a polarization location index for the linear polarizer. A linear polarizer plate face of one of the chip-scale circular polarizing filters is then positioned so that the linear polarizer plate face is aligned with and parallel to an output face of a laser, whereby the polarization axis of the linear polarizer is not orthogonal to a polarization axis of the laser. The chip-scale circular polarizing filter is coupled to a frame after the positioning step.