Surface topography characterization using 3D stereoscopic reconstruction of SEM images

Abstract

A major drawback of the optical microscope is its limitation to resolve finer details. Many microscopes have been developed to overcome the limitations set by the diffraction of visible light. The scanning electron microscope (SEM) is one such alternative: it uses electrons for imaging, which have much smaller wavelength than photons. As a result high magnification with superior image resolution can be achieved. However, SEM generates 2D images which provide limited data for surface measurements and analysis. Often many research areas require the knowledge of 3D structures as they contribute to a comprehensive understanding of microstructure by allowing effective measurements and qualitative visualization of the samples under study. For this reason, stereo photogrammetry technique is employed to convert SEM images into 3D measurable data. This paper aims to utilize a stereoscopic reconstruction technique as a reliable method for characterization of surface topography. Reconstructed results from SEM images are compared with coherence scanning interferometer (CSI) results obtained by measuring a roughness reference standard sample. This paper presents a method to select the most robust/consistent surface texture parameters that are insensitive to the uncertainties involved in the reconstruction technique itself. Results from the two-stereoscopic reconstruction algorithms are also documented in this paper.

STMP at 10: shaping surface metrology, measurement and phenomena for a decade

“…Measurement of the topography of textured surfaces has been a major area for STMP. More than 30 manuscripts have focused solely on metrological aspects of textured surfaces, proposing new measuring procedures, new protocols for improving the extraction of the main texture´s features, and parameters for more meaningful quantification of the surface textures [33, 37, 40, 75, 78, 80, 82, 83, 92, 95, 101, 102, 109, 119, 120, 167,170,172,[178][179][180][181][182][183][184][185][186][187][188][189][190][191][192][193]]. In the last decades, scatterometry has matured to be a fast, precise and accurate characterization technique [194].…”

Accurate post-mortem alignment for Focused Ion Beam and Scanning Electron Microscopy (FIB-SEM) tomography

“…This stereoscopic approach consists in acquiring stereo-pairs or stereo-triplets of micrographs from which the surface reconstruction is deduced from simple trigonometric calculations retrieving the height of any detail at the surface from the differently inclined projections. Several in-house or commercial computer programs exist that have been widely used in the SEM community for various applications [58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67]. Figure 5 illustrates the measurement of the surface of our 'test' serpentine sample investigated by FIB-SEM tomography.…”

Characterizing Low-cost Registration for Photographic Images to Computed Tomography

“…stereoscopic techniques). Krishna et al use stereoscopic scanning electron microscope images to construct surface topography for characterization of engineering surface quality 15 . HajiRassouliha, et al use a four-camera stereoscope to measure 3-D deformations of skin 16 .…”