Ocean Optics ElliCalc - Manual (Page 8)

Ocean Optics Germany GmbH Thin Film Metrology
7
4 Getting started
After installation of your hardware and software you should be ready to make your first measurements.
An example:
1. For the first steps it is a good idea to use a special “step wafer” with different oxide thicknesses. You
can use this wafer to check the correct functionality of the ellipsometer. Please ask your hardware
supplier for information about step wafers.
Otherwise use a really well known sample with good optical properties (not rough, homogenous,
simple layer structure, like SiO
2
on Si). Put the wafer on the stage.
2. Choose a room without too much light, avoid full sunlight and reflections (you might run into problems
with stray light).
3. Load a layer recipe (via “files/load layer recipe”) corresponding to your sample, e.g. “SiO2 on Si.lrc”.
Then the structure in Setup picture shows a correct layer system
4. Then put your wafer in the middle of the chuck and switch on your power supply and lamps
5. Start ElliCalc.exe (there should be no warnings or error messages) and wait unil all messages “please
wait” have disappeared.
6. click on the button „init“and wait unil all wait and progress messages have disappeared.
7. Now the ellipsometer motors are initialized. There is no absolute need to press the button “auto
intensity”, as this action has been performed by “init” (but are allowed to do it….)
8. Now press the button “continuous”, you should see a live signal. Try to maximize this signal by using
the height adjustment and the tilt adjustment of your stage. In case that these 2 adjustments were
considerable: press “auto intensity” to optimize the integration time again.
9. Now click on the button “init” and wait for some seconds. The motors of the ellipsometer will move to
their starting positions.
10. Click on the black button “continuous”. The button turns to red and you should see an intensity signal
on the screen. Manually adjust the height of your stage to maximize this signal. Click on the (red)
button “continuous” again to stop this mode.
11. Click on the button “auto intensity”. The integrations times are chosen automatically so that the
maximum signal height is about 75% of the maximum to avoid saturation. If you change your sample
now or later and the new sample has a different reflectivity you have to press the button “auto
intensity” again. If the new sample is of the same type as before this is not necessary but advisable.
12. Now click the button “measure”. The measurement will take some seconds.
13. Now you see the measured data with the typical interference wiggles.
14. Then click on the button „analyze“ and wait for the result. You should get meaningful results.