I am working for a nanotechnology company in which we coat various substrates with a hydrophobic nanolayer in order to make the surfaces water-resistant. We are looking for ways to measure the thickness of our nanolayers, which we expect to be between 50 nm and 500 nm. Thank you!
Shane.
As i understand, you just want to measure the layer thickness. That can be achieved in two ways.
1. If you have FE-SEM, you can directly take the cross section image and measure the nano layer thickness by the in built image analysis software. It is recommended to take the measurements at 5 different locations and report the average value with standard deviation.
2. The second method is quite different than the visual images obtained by SEM. In this case if you have the ATR-FTIR data, you can calculate the thickness of the nanolayer by utilizing the method given by Oldani and Schock (M. Oldani, G. Schock, Characterization of ultrafiltration membranes by infrared spectroscopy, ESCA and contact angle measurements, J. Membr. Sci. 43 (1989) 243–258.).
Article Characterization of ultrafiltration membranes by infrared sp...
What it has been mentioned earlier by Baig is good way. However, there is alternative method, which is costly, XPS depth profile. For the 50 nm layer thickness, it will cost you roughly 200-300 USD.
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