FILMETRIX F40: Thin film thickness measurement system

This instrument is used to measure the thickness of transparent and semi-transparent thin films via reflection or transmission spectroscopy.  Films as thin as a few tens of nm can be measured when the UV light is turned on.  An SOP will be coming soon.

Submitted by Lukas.Chrostowski on Wed, 25/02/2009 – 11:08am.

Here is how to save the raw data from the spectrum measurement.  This is useful if you want to use it as a spectrum analyzer, or to do your own signal processing separately (e.g. transmission measurements):

1. from setup menu select “data acquisition”
2. in the data acquisition interface window uncheck both ‘subtract dark’ and ‘use reference’ and then select ‘apply’
3. place your sample on the stage
4. from the ‘acquire’ menu select ‘do single acquisition’
5. if you see flat top on the spectrum that means you got too much light to the detector. Lower the integration time in the ‘data acquisition’ window (step 1) – you have to uncheck ‘auto integration’ first before put in a lower integration time
6. if you get a good spectrum you can use the ‘file’ menu to ‘save measured spectrum”  into a text file (list of wavelength and raw reflectance, raw data directly from the detector).
7. you can open this file and load it back to the FILMeasure s/w or open it with Excel to look at the reflectance values.

Note: you should calibrate the instrument with an appropriate substrate material before taking your sample measurements.