I am not so sure that I understand your question perfectly. Also source (technique) of ”grain size” and ”roughness” is not depicted in your question.

As far as I know any universal ”pure calculation” of thin film thickness You asked for is practically impossible because You will need to know a lot of variables involved.

However, there are plenty of techniques for determination of thin film thicknesses. But choosing of right one depends of material nature, film thickness, desired accuracy, etc.

Probably the most general and very accurate is to use of Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) (or profilometer) to measure difference between heights of thin film surface and substrate surface (obtained e.g. by substrate masking during deposition or scratching/etching of thin film). The benefit of this technique is also fact, that it is direct measurement technique.

Also application of spectroscopic ellipsometry may give You desired thickness with high accuracy, however for some materials evaluation may be very difficult or even impossible.

And for thicknesses of hundreds of nanometers or ones of microns a lot of optical techniques based on interference of transmitted or reflected light were established.

Also cross-sectional view by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) can be applied, as mentioned above.

Dear Dr Manal Almafraji

please try to make a cross section through the film substrate, then you can use SEM

to measure the film thickness.

I am not so sure that I understand your question perfectly. Also source (technique) of ”grain size” and ”roughness” is not depicted in your question.

As far as I know any universal ”pure calculation” of thin film thickness You asked for is practically impossible because You will need to know a lot of variables involved.

However, there are plenty of techniques for determination of thin film thicknesses. But choosing of right one depends of material nature, film thickness, desired accuracy, etc.

Probably the most general and very accurate is to use of Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) (or profilometer) to measure difference between heights of thin film surface and substrate surface (obtained e.g. by substrate masking during deposition or scratching/etching of thin film). The benefit of this technique is also fact, that it is direct measurement technique.

Also application of spectroscopic ellipsometry may give You desired thickness with high accuracy, however for some materials evaluation may be very difficult or even impossible.

And for thicknesses of hundreds of nanometers or ones of microns a lot of optical techniques based on interference of transmitted or reflected light were established.

Also cross-sectional view by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) can be applied, as mentioned above.

Dr. Adel thank you very much for your answer but i think that is a distractive test .

Dear Dr. Jan thank you very much for the answer . I get an AFM result but they give me just the grain size and Roughness .

So at the next time I shall tell them to give me the depth .

Manal,

You can use various techniques to determine the thickness of sputtered film, such as cross-sectional SEM, cross-sectional TEM, AFM, Profilometer, Spectroscopic Ellipsometry, etc. If you want a non-destructive method to determine the film thickness, you can try optical profilometer and/or ellipsometer.

Probably you can get idea from this paper: "http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186%2F2251-7235-6-13#page-1"

Swanepoel method is employed for spectroscopic determination of optical properties of thin film using transmittance data.

I have used it for the determination of thickness of silicon thin films deposited by e-beam evaporation on glass substrate.

Thanks Dr. Jea Cho for your answer I use optical method to calculate the thickness but I want to check if my result is accurate .

Dear Dr. Beladiya Vivek ,

I shall read the paper ,thanks

You may use profilometer as well, but X-Ray Reflectivity is used as an accurate and non-destructive method.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gwmvl49lzyi2yb1/X-ray%20thin-film%20measurement%20techniques_V_X-ray%20reflectivity%20measurement.pdf

Thanks Umut for yor answer I will read it.

If you have already used Spectroscopic Ellipsometry, then I have to agree with Umut and propose you the XRR. Using cross-section TEM is a very accurate method, but it has to be done by an experienced scientist.

The best way to measure the thickness of such thin films (assuming they are transparent) is by ellipsometer. Alternatively, use some kapton tape on your sample before the deposition and check the step height in profilometer after removing the tape

AES depth profile is an effective tool for the measurement of nano-coatings such as Ti oxide layer or crystalline oxide coatings. Other technique such as ellipsometry may be not suitable for the films having micro-rough surface geometry, (coating is not very smooth as micrror polished surface). Thus I recommend AES depth profile or SEM ( thickness evaluation after embedding your specimen to resin), but SEM thickness evaluation is rather technique-sensitive.

Many thanks to Beladiya Vivek and Umut Parlak for the very useful links. In particular, I've loved a lot the link to The Rigaku Journal (provided by Umut Parlak). There is a lot of useful papers therein (even if its webpage is not very friendly and difficult to browse, with a search engine not very practical -you can't browse the issues one by one, as you're given to do in any journal-).

As all who say that by using SEM one can get an exact thickness but if the nanofilm is isolated then another thin film may be appear in the scanning pic.

As your film appears not too be extremely thin, making a cut by focused ion beam (FIB) would be a possibility. Like this you do not destroy a lot of material. Regarding SEM for measuring the sample in cross-section: it may be necessary to deposit first a few nanometers of carbon, if parts of the samples are insolators. Otherwise, charging effects may give you misleading information.

By using a test substrate with some patterned photoresist you can lift off some narrow strips and use AFM to accurately measure the thickness (take care with the spikes in the edges of the strips!). However, if you have access to x-ray reflectivity, it is the best and straightforward method to measure some tens of nm. Besides, you can obtain from those measurements information on roughness to compare with your previous data.

Thank Dr. But I haven't access to x-ray reflectivity

Thank you

Hello dear

You can estimation the thickness of coating by two methods

first by using AFM technique

second by depends on the weight of coat by using this equation

you are know the weight of coat by weight before and after coating

and know the density of coating , now you can calculate the volume of coating , after this you can calculate the thickness of coating from this eq.

V= r2 * 3.14 * thickness

r=radius of specimen coated

XRR, X-Ray Reflectivity, is the best NDE in situ method to characterize Nano films and surface smoothness precisely. If you are working with "Thin films (nanofilms) prepared by D.C. Sputtering", then this technique is indispensable for characterizing such samples thoroughly. The equipment needed is as rudimentary as any conventional diffractometer, proportional counter and/or photographic film to acquire the data. This method is tried and tested for nearly a century after the Braggs. Please review the following for examples of a more modern real time application of XRR to evaluate a sputtered thin film of Pt. on Si and the ubiquitous NIST 2000 SRM (standard reference material):

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_depths_can_one_typically_probe_with_XRR_X-ray_Reflectivity_Reflectometery?_tpcectx=profile_questions

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Can_XRR_X-Ray_Reflectivity_be_implemented_in_the_Topographic_Mode_with_spatial_resolution_over_the_sample_surface_Is_there_value_for_such_analyses

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Would_anyone_have_a_clue_as_to_the_origin_of_unexpected_spots_in_the_real_time_2D_XRR_signal_from_thin_film_samples_on_substrates_Yoneda_Spots?_tpcectx=profile_questions

Hi Manal Almafraji ,

Although I do not know what Kind of element you are using for DC Sputtring but as I am already working on similar Project, I would suggest you to use Ellipsometry as it will give you characterization at the scale of 0.1nm while also you can use SEM/AFM for it as already suggested by many Researchers.

Also I hope this pdf helps you more in detail