Dear Sri: the only way - in my opinion- to know the layer thickness from the AFM image, in to check is there is in the image a hole, or a lack of film material that allow you, measure the real depth of the layer, doing a line profile for example.

AFM is able to give you a direct measurement of the sample surface topography. If the film is continuous, homogeneous and has no discontinuities, and the AFM image is a reflection of that area, it would be difficult to determine the thickness of the film.

If you want to send me the image I could check it and give you my impression.

Regards

Alternatively, you can deposit your material after covering a small part of the substrate with say a small piece of alumina or silicon (of course this depends on which deposition technique you are using, but usually works with most of the commonly used deposition techniques). Post deposition you can remove whatever you used to cover the substrate. You can then repeat the AFM scan again and make sure that the scan crosses the boundary of the deposited material and the part which you had covered during deposition. Then you can use the software to give you an accurate assessment of the thickness.

Tricks with holes and defects might be ambiguous. I am afraid that width of the removed material deposited on the line done with the marker will be much larger than available size of the microscope scan .

Another possibility is to make a scratch (20-30 microns wide) on the film surface. You have to do it gently to remove only the film but you cannot scratch the substrate surface (should be smooth and flat in the section line). Then you can determine the film thickness from the AFM profile. If adhesion is too strong and you can not remove the deposited layer (e. g. Co, Mo deposited on glass) use a Au or Cu seed layer (buffer). Then you will do a scratch easily, but another measurement of the buffer thickness has to be done This is an disadvantage of this approach (you need to subtract a total thickness of the bilayer from the buffer thickness). We have been applying successfully this method for a long time and it works well.

Thanks for your valuable inputs..

My question was "Given that the AFM is already recorded without creating any step, Is there any way to find the thickness??

A short answer "No" unless you have the substrate exposed somewhere in the scan area.

No, if you do not have any cracks in already scanned AFM image you can not find through software.

In thin films (2D or 3D), there is possibility of discontinuity. In few scans you can always find some part of substrate.

The image of the film shows a rough and irregular surface with grains and not observed any "clean" area where it can reach the substrate.

If you get the height between the highest and the lowest of the image, the height value is underestimated, as there is a part of the film, whose thickness can not be measured.

Unless repeat the measurement, on an area that is clean substrate can not be measured the actual height and overall film. I calculated the roughness in the sample, the average height is 214.28 nm and the Máximum height at the image : 457.08 nm

Thus the layer or film will have a thickness not less than 214 nm and if you know or have an estimate of the theoretical thickness, you can calculate the deviation, which is due to that there is no point in the image, completely clean, in which can be measured actual height between the substrate and the layer.

In particular in this image is, in this sample, with a rough surface with a lot of scatter in the heights of the grains, even with a clean area in which to measure the substrate, it would be difficult to give a specific value, the thickness the film.

Please find attached a Word document with tho screenshots about roughness and height profile mesurement.

Please find the attached file

@Carmen Serra --- Thanks a lot.. It was very informative.. Thanks again

@Carmen ... can you tell me which software you used for the analysis of the image i sent???

Hello Sri, to process your image, I used the free software developed by the Spanish company NANOTEC, which also manufactures atomic force microscopes.

I am attaching word file, with some of the possibilities offered by this software, you will need some time to get familiar with it, but it is very fexible.

Just keep in mind that the only restriction of use is as follows

"Nanotec Electronica offers its WSxM Scanning Probe Microscopy SPM Software to all community and any other interested, free and without any restriction of use aside from the ones listed below:

■ It can not be used with commercial purposes without Nanotec's written consent.

■ Whenever WSxM is used to process data, analyze it or render images in a public presentation or scientific magazine, we would appreciate if it was cited as "I. Forks, R. Fernandez, JM Gomez-Rodriguez, J. Colchero, J. Gomez-Herrero and AM Baro, Rev. Sci Instrum. 78, 013705 (2007) "(see the article) and Nanotec Electronica webpage" www.nanotec.es ". By doing so you help keeping as a freeware WSxM application.There is not any commercial WSxM version".

I have inserted into the Word file, the link to download the software.

@ Carmen ..Thanks alot

Hi Venkatesh,

Carmen's reply is very informative, especially for WSxM software. For AFM characterization of thin film thickness, I would like to draw your attent to our paper by X. D. Hong, Y. Gan and Y. Wang, "Facile measurement of polymer film thickness ranging from nanometer to micrometer scale using atomic force microscopy", Surf. Interface Anal., 43 (2011) 1299. Here is the official link to it and you may also find the full-text on my RG home page. http://doi.org/10.1002/sia.3711.

Hope this helps.

Yang

Another software that i used and found quite useful was the Gwyddion which is an open source software and quite accurate results.

Venkatesh

Everyone here offered good suggestions. I will also suggest the free software called 'Gwyddion' to process afm data.