Applicability of the effective medium approximation in the ellipsometry of randomly micro-rough solid surfaces.

Abstract

The effective medium approximation (EMA) has been widely applied to model the effect of a solid sample with surface roughness in spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE). There are two specific cases to utilize the EMA model. One is utilizing the EMA model to perform the inversion of the optical constants of solid samples from the SE measurements. Another is utilizing the EMA model to estimate the thickness of the rough layer at solid surface from the SE measurements under the condition in which the optical constants of samples are known. For the first case, the thickness of the rough layer is usually assumed to be the root mean square (rms) roughness as measured by atomic force microscopy (AFM). We theoretically investigate the error of the EMA model to estimate optical constants for different surface morphologies and materials. Because the EMA model only accounts for the height irregularities of rough surfaces but neglects the effect of the lateral irregularities on electromagnetic scattering from rough surfaces, it is difficult to obtain high-precision results for optical constants. Moreover, the inversion error of optical constants by using the EMA model is difficult to evaluate. In the second case, the thickness of the rough layer is estimated by using the EMA model from the SE measurements, called the EMA model roughness. We show that the EMA model roughness generally has a deviation from the rms roughness as measured by AFM. Some correlated relationships are established between the EMA model roughness and the morphological parameters of rough surfaces. It is found that these relationships have similar forms but not identical coefficients for different materials. The results from this work may facilitate a better understanding and utilization for the EMA model in SE.