Analysis of the Leonard and Ramey Method of Determining the Thickness of Thin Metallic Films

Abstract

The method of determining the thickness of thin metallic films from measurements of the conductivity and the isothermal Hall voltage is examined with a detail made feasible by implementing the analysis as a portion of a computer program designed for the reduction of the measured data. It is observed that the deviation of the computed data points from the values obtained by direct measurement of the thicknesses of the films, is not due predominantly to errors in the assumed values of the bulk mean free path for electrons. It is demonstrated that errors in the measurement of the geometry of the films will produce the same type of deviation in the results but to a larger extent than does the error in the electronic mean free path.