Topographic measurements of supersmooth dielectric films made with a mechanical profiler and a scanning force microscope

Abstract

The roughnesses of five supersmooth dielectric films of Si₃N₄, TiO₂, HfO₂, Ta₂O₅, and Al₂O₃ prepared by an ion-beam-sputtering technique were measured with a commercial Talystep mechanical profiler and a sensitive Leica WYKO SPM30 scanning force microscope (SFM) to determine how much roughness the films added to the ~1-Å-rms roughness fused-silica substrates on which they were deposited. In all cases the increase in roughness for the three-quarter-wave optical thickness films was a small fraction of an angstrom. SFM measurements showed that the topography of the Ta₂O₅ and Al₂O₃ films was less random than that of the other film materials and the substrates.

© 1995 Optical Society of America

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