Abstract
In this paper, a new non-destructive method of measuring the thickness of nanometer thin films by medium energy electron excited X-ray fluorescence was introduced. Due to strong decay of the intensity of incident electron beam with energy of the order of 1 keV in solid materials, the penetration depth is very small, only in the order of 1 nm. Therefore, the escape depth of the X-ray fluorescence excited by the electron beam is also limited by the penetration depth of the incident electron beam, i.e., the X-ray fluorescence detected is emitted only from the top most layers. By simply compare the intensity of an XRF peak from the substrate with/without the deposition of thin film, the thickness of the films can be easily calculated. The method described in this paper is simple in participle, nondestructive, and applicable for films of any elements. As an example, a set of Al films deposited on Si substrate was demonstrated, the results show that this method is feasible, and the detection limit can be as low as 1 nm or less.
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