Investigation of a half-wave method for birefringence or thickness measurements of a thick, semitransparent, uniaxial, anisotropic substrate by use of spectroscopic ellipsometry

A half-wave method of measurement of wafer birefringence that is based on interference fringes recorded from a uniaxial wafer by use of a standard phase-modulated spectroscopic ellipsometer is investigated. The birefringence of uniaxial wafers is calculated from the extremal points in the recorded oscillating intensities. A formalism is developed to incorporate the change in birefringence with wavelength as a correction factor. The correction explains the overestimation of the birefringence from previous similar research on thick uniaxial sapphire substrates. The enhanced derivative of the birefringence that is due to polarization-dependent intraconduction band transitions is detected. Furthermore, for well-characterized wafers it is shown that this method can be used in wafer-thickness mapping of 4H-SiC and similar uniaxial high-bandgap semiconductors. (C) 2000 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: 260.1180, 260.1446, 260.2130, 260.5430, 160.1190.