Abstract

It is shown that the unknown thicknesses of any two transparent layers in an arbitrary multilayer system from a single ellipsometric measurement can be found by the solution of an eighth-degree real polynomial. The method gives directly all the possible physical solutions, which are computed from the real roots of the polynomial. The coefficients of the polynomial are determined by the angle of incidence, the refractive indices of all the phases, and the thicknesses of the other layers. The method is used on a simulated system of air/silicon nitride/silicon oxide/silicon.

© 1996 Optical Society of America

Polynomial inversion of the single transparent layer problem in ellipsometry

Jean-Pierre Drolet, Stoyan C. Russev, Maxim I. Boyanov, and Roger M. Leblanc
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 11(12) 3284-3291 (1994)

Analytical determination of the optical constants of a substrate in the presence of a covering layer by use of ellipsometric data

S. C. Russev, M. I. Boyanov, J.-P. Drolet, and R. M. Leblanc
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 16(6) 1496-1500 (1999)

General inversion method for single-wavelength ellipsometry of samples with an arbitrary number of layers

S. Bosch and F. Monzonis
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 12(6) 1375-1379 (1995)

Representation of the transparent layer–arbitrary substrate system parameters through the Fourier coefficients of the ellipsometric function

Stoyan C. Russev
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 16(2) 364-370 (1999)

Determination of film thickness and refractive index in one measurement of phase-modulated ellipsometry

Denis Pristinski, Veronika Kozlovskaya, and Svetlana A. Sukhishvili
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 23(10) 2639-2644 (2006)