You could measure the weight of the sputtered material by weighing the sample before sputtering and during the periods you are doing the frequent process with RF
Assuming the phase does not change, I go by rate measurements of the constituents. Typically weighing is a struggle due to the minuscule magnitudes involved.
what is your sputtered material? If it is alloy, I would suggest the method of elemental analysis---ICP, which can give you the relative amount of your metals contained in your sample. However, this method won't be possible to tell the amount of oxygen.
Perhaps diffraction could help you:
XRR can give you the width of each layer.
Using diffraction, provided than the growth process meets some requirements, you can estimate the amount of each phase (layer in this case).
The quantification of small amounts of Al in ZnO is not an easy task. However if Al is in low concentration, you can roughly calculate the amount of Al by calibrating the Al deposition rate as a function of the RF power. However if you want an accurate measurement of Al content in your films, you must analyze their composition. My experience is that only RBS is a good technique to do it and to calibrate any other method such as EDX, IR spectroscopy, etc. If you deposit your samples on a thin film of a heavy metal like Mo, Au or Ta, you can obtain accurate composition of your layers because all the elements (Zn, O and Al) can be well resolved in the RBS spectra. In this way, it is easy obtaining good results with Al contents as low as 2 % atomic.
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