Error-reduced channeled spectroscopic ellipsometer with palm-size sensing head

This paper describes a newly developed prototype system of the channeled spectroscopic ellipsometer (CSE). The new system has a feature that the major systematic and random error sources of the previous CSEs are effectively reduced or compensated for. In addition, the prototype preserves the advantageous features of the CSE in that it has a palm-size sensing head and that its acquisition time is as fast as 20 ms. Its performance is experimentally examined by use of 12 films whose thicknesses are ranging approximately from 3 to 4000 nm. The film thicknesses measured by the new CSE show good agreements with the ones by the rotating-compensator spectroscopic ellipsometer. The stability of the film-thickness measurement of the new CSE against the temperature change from 5 to 45 degrees C is less than 0.11 nm. The CSE can open up new applications of the spectroscopic ellipsometers in which the compactness, the simplicity, and the rapid response are important. (C) 2009 American Institute of Physics. [DOI: 10.1063/1.3206346]