Veeco Dektak Stylus Profilometer

The stylus profilometer uses a diamond tipped stylus to scan across the sample surface and measures the surface topography of thin and thick films. The vertical movements of the stylus is measured and recorded simultaneously during the scanning, which reveals the topographical structure of the surface. The instrument has vertical resolution in nanometers and horizontal resolution as small as twenty nanometers and measures the film thicknesses from 5 nm and over 500 µm.

Filmetrics Optical Profilometer

An optical profilometer measures thin film properties using the spectral reflectance technique. Spectral reflectance measures the amount of light reflected from a thin film over a range of wavelengths, with the incident light perpendicular to the sample surface. It can measure the thickness, roughness, and optical constants of a film by measuring how the films interact with light. Optical constants describe how light propagates through and reflects from a material. Once the optical constants are measured they may be related to other material parameters, such as composition and band gap. This method is non-destructive, and requires little or no sample preparation, but has a limitation of measuring only less complex structures. For more detailed measurements, ellipsometry is the most suitable method.