Increasing the Accuracy of the Characterization of a Thin Semiconductor or Dielectric Film on a Substrate from Only One Quasi-Normal Incidence UV/Vis/NIR Reflectance Spectrum of the Sample

Abstract

OEMT is an existing optimizing envelope method for thin-film characterization that uses only one transmittance spectrum, T(λ), of the film deposited on the substrate. OEMT computes the optimized values of the average thickness, d¯, and the thickness non-uniformity, Δd, employing variables for the external smoothing of T(λ), the slit width correction, and the optimized wavelength intervals for the computation of d¯ and Δd, and taking into account both the finite size and absorption of the substrate. Our group had achieved record low relative errors, <0.1%, in d¯ of thin semiconductor films via OEMT, whereas the high accuracy of d¯ and Δd allow for the accurate computation of the complex refractive index, N˙(λ), of the film. In this paper is a proposed envelope method, named OEMR, for the characterization of thin dielectric or semiconductor films using only one quasi-normal incidence UV/Vis/NIR reflectance spectrum, R(λ), of the film on the substrate. The features of OEMR are similar to the described above features of OEMT. OEMR and several popular dispersion models are employed for the characterization of two a-Si films, only from R(λ), with computed d¯ = 674.3 nm and Δd = 11.5 nm for the thinner film. It is demonstrated that the most accurate characterizations of these films over the measured spectrum are based on OEMR.