Study of Silicon Surface Roughness by Atomic Force Microscopy

Abstract

Progress is reported in developing reliable methodology for imaging silicon surfaces with the atomic force microscope (AFM). A new form of AFM, known as tapping mode AFM, has been found to provide the best quality data for surface roughness determinations. Commercially available colloidal gold spheres have been used to fabricate tip characterization standards and are used to report tip size with roughness data. Power spectral density calculations are shown to provide a useful roughness calculation based on lateral wavelength.

Composition and morphology of a MgF2/Al multilayer thin film reflective coating

“…4. [13][14][15][16][17] Further studies are needed to compare results obtained from characterization of thin films using optical techniques ͑ellipsometry͒ to those from the combination of XPS and AFM since the former technique can be readily applied as an in situ monitor of film growth 22 whereas the latter techniques appear to provide less ambiguous information for complex systems. The scans were taken over a 1 mϫ1 m range with a pixel density of 512ϫ512.…”