Hi. What type of microscopy data do you have at the moment (optical, SEM. etc.)? What kind of quantification do you need? At what scale? You can probably count the amount of cracks on the microscopy images you have, but if you need depth profile and shape of the pile-ups, etc., then, depending on the scale, you'll need AFM or an optical profiler (lower resolution larger areas).

Try PTR technique- it realy fits this kind of measurement or PT thermography.

You can analyse your film by using AFM in tapping mode.

Yep, I think a bettr especification of what you really need would help. In fact, "thin" films could be a amatter of a long discussion. We've tested thin films (nm-um) scale using confocal and intererometric microscopy in the past. One of our spin offs is currently selling that expertise.

I think AFM and SEM may help for the quntification of the cracks on the surface of a metal thin film.

Thanks for the answers. Right now I have optical microscope images of my Copper film on a polymer substrate, and I want to quantify the amount of cracks on the surface of the films, so I can compare. How should I proceed?

i have investigated the Cu film on Si substrate before, I used the SIMS to ananysize the content in different depth to see the content profile. Only deppentding on the image may not make sense to analysize the cause of the cracks . the defects may caused by the formation of some componds such as CuO or others

What is the scale of the area you are interested in? What is the average size of the cracks? Since you have a metal film, SEM is a good option for large-area analysis, as well as more detailed quantification, like e.g. size of individual cracks. If you also want to know profile of the cracks, depth, size of pile-ups, etc., then the most straightforward options are either AFM for smaller cracks and areas less than 100 microns on the side, or optical profiling for larger areas.

Hello Artoni,

My research is dealling with 3D optical microscopy. If the lateral resolution you need is not greater than 0.3um (up to this value; better resolution is not accessable in optical microscopy) you should try using Zygo 3D interference microscope. This tool can give you axial resolution of about 1nm in very high scanning speed and great field of views (hundreds of microns).

Good luck

If you only want to work with what you have already (an optical image), then I suggest imageJ, it's a free software, and allows 3rd party plug-ins, I've used it to quantify things like porosity (could be used to work with crack area) and particle size, perhaps you could check it out.

Artoni

As JP suggests, if you only have images (and not 3D profiles, which would be far more precise, I'd use ImageJ (because it is free) to binarize and threshold the images and then quantify the surface area of the cracks. This gives you, at least, an objective metric of what's happening if you need comparison purposes. Defects behnd the first surface layer, depth of cracks, etc, will be features lost at this stage which would be solving with some 3D mciroscopy technique or adapted interferometer.

Thanks for the help everyone.

Santiago Royo, yes, thats what I'm trying to do now, but I'm currently using Matlab. I might try switching to ImageJ.