Mixed polarization in determining the film thickness of a silicon sphere by spectroscopic ellipsometry

Abstract

The effect of a spherical shape on the measurement result of spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE) is analyzed, and a method to eliminate this effect is proposed. Based on the simulation result of the SE measurement on a silicon sphere by ray tracking, we find that the sphere makes the parallel incident beam of the SE be divergent after reflection, and the measurement error of the SE caused by this phenomenon is explained by the mixed polarization theory. By settling an aperture in front of the detector of the SE, we can almost eliminate the error. For the silicon sphere with a diameter of 94 mm used in the Avogadro project, the thickness error of the oxide layer caused by the spherical shape can be reduced from 0.73 nm to 0.04 nm by using the proposed method. The principle of the method and the results of the experimental verification are presented.