Dear all,
I am wondering how is the precise way to determine the film thickness from the cross-section of SEM with a certain degree of surface roughness?
Shall I determine the film thickness from the top-most, middle, or the bottom-most of the surface roughness? Please kindly find attached an illustration figure to explain each part I am questioning about.
Thank you very much in advance.
Best Regards,
Efi
The way we do it when faced with coatings and/or substrates that are not smooth, is that we measure thickness at randomly chosen 100 to 200 locations along the cross-section (by hand or using image analysis, depending on the images).
You then get a thickness distribution, from which you can compute the mean and its confidence interval, the median, the min & max, the spread and whatever statistics descriptors you might like.
Dear Mr. Pierre Caulet ,
thank you very much for your answer.
By the way, if the surface roughness part looks brighter than the film itself, is it plausible if I think that the 'brighter part' is surface contamination instead of the grown film?
I would rather first suspect that it is because of sample topography : if your section's edge is oriented towards your SE detector, you will get more electrons coming back to it from ridges, such as the edge of your section, hence more brightness.
That is of course, if you're working on a sample that has surface topography (not smooth) and working with a directional detector (not BSD under the polar pieces).
Second guess : you sputtered a metal coat on top your sample and it may have enhanced edge contrast under BSD.
If not, I cannot tell, without knowing more about your sample and which detector you're using.
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