C-5 Absolute Thickness Determination of SMCO Films on Silicon Substrates Utilizing X-ray Diffraction and Their Composition Measurements By EXRF

Abstract

This paper presents a nondestructive measurement technique for the accurate and absolute determination of film thicknesses of Co and SmCo based magnetic films deposited by sputtering on single crystal Silicon (100) substrates. X-Ray diffraction of Cu K radiation has been used to measure the intensity of the (400) reflection from bare silicon substrates and as attenuated by sputter coated Co and SmCo based films on Si substrates. A 4-axis research diffractometer allowed the substrate orientation to be fine adjusted to maximize the (400) diffraction intensity. The absolute thickness of SmCo based films was in a range from 0.05 to 5 Co film thicknesses on Si could be measured to a few tens of nanometers. The absolute accuracy of the thickness measurements depend on the effective mass attenuation coefficient of the film material. For the materials considered, thicknesses determined by the X-Ray attenuation method agree within at least several percent to values determined by other methods.