Ultra/thin hard films: optical characterization and metrology in industrial manufacturing

Peter Pokrowsky

doi:10.1117/12.544608

10 September 2004 Ultra/thin hard films: optical characterization and metrology in industrial manufacturing

Peter Pokrowsky

Proceedings Volume 5457, Optical Metrology in Production Engineering; (2004) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.544608
Event: Photonics Europe, 2004, Strasbourg, France

Abstract

Ultra thin hard films such as diamond like carbon, carbon nitride or cubic boron nitride are instrumental for many high-tech products, e.g. to extend the useful life of tools or to protect the magnetic layers in hard disk drives. In the last years the development went to thinner protection layers. Especially carbon films with a thickness down to 2 nm were investigated using ellipsometry and x-ray reflectometry. Their thickness and optical constants were determined and correlations to other film parameters such as hardness, hydrogen or nitrogen content were found. The main problem of the optical characterization of these thin hard films on real functional layers is caused by the unknown optical constants of these underlayers. Thus these have to be measured simultaneously, which increases the number of unknown parameters significantly. As a consequence the development work for optical metrology of these products need more sophisticated methods like spectroscopic ellipsometry, Raman spectroscopy, x-ray reflectometry, and atomic force microscopy. With the data from these investigations in the development lab the real mass production can be controlled by simpler optical instrumentation such as single wavelength ellipsometry and FT-IR spectroscopy.

Citation Download Citation

Peter Pokrowsky "Ultra/thin hard films: optical characterization and metrology in industrial manufacturing", Proc. SPIE 5457, Optical Metrology in Production Engineering, (10 September 2004); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.544608

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KEYWORDS

Carbon

Magnetism

Metals

Thin films

Nitrogen

Ellipsometry

Optics manufacturing

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