Can anyone suggest to me what would be the best instrument for thin film thickness measurement? The films will be deposited by spray, spin, and chemical bath deposition technique. The materials are polymer, oxide, and sulfide .
A very precise method is x-ray reflectometry. you can get the film thickness from simulations of the data very accurate with errors of less than 0.1 nm. It works fine for all the materials you use, polymers, oxids and sulfide. This is much better than what you can obtain by profilometry, which is probably the second choise.
Suitability of methods would also depend on uniformity and morphological properties of the films. A further aspect might be the need for non-destructive analysis and the choice of substrate. Yet another one the need of thickness measurement during film formation. there is hardly a unique answer to your question.
E.g., if you can afford fracturing the specimen and if the substrate is glass, then you could do SEM on a fractured sample and investigate homogeneity and cross sectional morphology of the film at the same time.
There are different methods available to calculate the thickness of thin films.
One could be ellipsometry as mentioned by other members and another could be small angle x-ray spectroscopy.
Also you can measure thickness by waver curvature method but I am not sure whether you have access to that instrument or not.
by SEM you can measure thickness (using a fracture part of your film) and also you can see cross section and surface morphology.
It depends on the thickness and optical properties of the film. A very useful technique for most of the materials and thickness is RBS (Rutherford Backscattering).
Otherwise, opaque thick films can be measured by profilometry by creating a fiscal step (using a caption tape) or by cross-section SEM. Thin films (
There are many ways in which you can determine the thickness of any thin film. All the method mentioned so far can be employed. However, from my experience, I found out RBS seems to be the most accurate. you can also try calo-wear and scratch test . The method to chose will depend on the availability of the equipment
Francisco response is very good and shows that it is possible to use several methods, I'll add the infrared spectroscopic ellipsometry adding chemical information and roughness
Hi Balraj, what is the range of thickness of your films that you want to measure?
for films not to thick , lets say below 500 nm, and homogenous you can get very precises measurements using X-ray reflectivity. It also allows you to measure multilayers made from multiple substances simultaneously getting information an the electron density and the roughness of each layer.
Hi Babu,
I will agree that it depends on the thickness of the film. If you have access to Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) instrument, you can measure the thickness of different layers after performing cross section
you can use Stylus proffilometery for thickness measurements of spray films.
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