Filtern
Erscheinungsjahr
Dokumenttyp
- Zeitschriftenartikel (22)
- Beitrag zu einem Tagungsband (7)
- Sonstiges (1)
Schlagworte
- Ellipsometry (7)
- Gas sensing (4)
- Optical properties (4)
- Ellipsometrie (3)
- Thin films (3)
- Doped tin oxide (2)
- Haftfestigkeit (2)
- Kohlenstoffschichten (2)
- Oberflächentechnik (2)
- Qualitätssicherung (2)
Organisationseinheit der BAM
Thin films of MgF2 have been deposited on silicon wafers in optical quality with a novel sol-gel deposition process at temperatures as low as 100 °C. The properties of the fluoride layers are compared to bulk MgF2 with respect to the optical constants. By employing spectroscopic mapping ellipsometry, the uniformity of the thickness of fluoride layers is confirmed to be within acceptable limits for optical applications. The optical constants are close to the bulk data. High-quality low-index films of suitable and homogeneous thickness have already been produced on a laboratory scale.
Most of the polymeric materials used are easy to ignite and show extensive flame spread along their surfaces. Apart from extensive heat release rates, their short time to ignition (tig), in particular, is a key fire hazard. Preventing ignition eliminates fire hazards completely. Protection layers that shift tig by more than an order of magnitude are powerful flame retardancy approaches presenting an alternative to the usual flame retardancy concepts.
Coatings are proposed that consist of a three-layer system to ensure adhesion to the substrate, acting as an infrared (IR) mirror and protecting against oxidation. The IR-mirror layer stack is realised by physical vapour deposition in the sub-micrometre (<1 µm) range, reducing heat absorption by up to an order of magnitude. Not only is the ease of ignition diminished (tig is increased by several minutes), the flame spread and fire growth indices are also remarkably reduced to as little as 1/10 of the values of the uncoated polymers open for further optimization. Sub-micrometre thin IR-mirror coatings yielding surface absorptivity <0.1 are proposed as a novel and innovative flame retardancy approach.
Embedding of information on surfaces is state of the art for identification testing in which public, hidden and forensic features are used. In many instances, the legal authentication of a product, a material or a document is required. Among the surface-based encoded labels, bar codes and data matrices are most frequently applied. They are publicly visible. The material itself is irrelevant, only a sufficient optical contrast is required.
However, a strong material dependence of the label can be achieved by means of Fabry-Perot layer stacks. Stack designs are described with regard to all three security levels: public features (e.g. color and tilt effect) perceptible by the human eye, hidden features (e.g. optical response in a given spectral range) detectable by commonly available instruments and forensic features (ellipsometric quantities Ψ and Δ as a function of wavelength λ and angle of incidence AOI) only detectable by sophisticated instruments.
Regarding material-correlated authentication, ellipsometric quantities Ψ and Δ are used as encoded forensic features for the first time. Hence, Fabry-Perot layer stacks as information carriers in combination with imaging ellipsometry as optical read-out system provide all-in-one anti-counterfeiting capabilities.
MgF2 and TiO2 single layers and layer stacks were produced by a spin-coating sol-gel process. The final temperature treatment was carried out at 100 °C. The layers were deposited onto silicon and fused silica substrates and were analysed by means of atomic force microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, ellipsometry, and UV-vis transmission spectroscopy. MgF2 and TiO2 single layers have morphological and optical properties comparable with physical vapour deposited layers. By using spectroscopic mapping ellipsometry, a good inter- and intra-sample homogeneity was confirmed. Multiple deposition steps result in a linear increase of layer thickness. Various films were deposited with thicknesses between 25 nm and 350 nm.
It was shown that the low temperature sol-gel process results in films of optical quality. Anti-reflective and high reflective layer stacks consisting of MgF2 and TiO2 were designed and can be produced now by a sol-gel process, whereas the MgF2 layers in the layer stacks contains also traces of MgF2-2xOx.
Standardisation of ellipsometry is mainly based on three documents: pioneering work at NIST [1] on film standards, a publicly available specification and stan-dard testing procedure [2] for real-world samples by BAM and a standard specification for integrated metrology by SEMI [3]. Other activities refer to inter-laboratory comparisons for selected layer/substrate systems and analytical methods including ellipsometry [4] and the development of combined standards for thickness d and step height h [5].
Generally, precision of ellipsmetry in terms of raw data Ψ and Δ meets the major demands for all ellipsometric principles (RPE, RAE, PME, RCE, NE).
As a result, fingerprint capabilty is al-most perfect for various layer/substrate systems. However, this is not true for accuracy in terms of physical quantities such as thickness d, optical (n, k) and dielectric constans (ε1, ε2,) as modelling is required. Hence, the layer/substrate and material dependent validation of models is nowadays a key issue.
In contrast to the sub-nanometer sensi-tivity in vertical direction, the effective lateral resolution of almost all ellipso-metric principles except for imaging null
ellipsometry is rather poor, usually be-yond 100 µm.
Hence, nanometer-scaled homogeneity testing and the measurement of micro- and nanopatterned structures is not feasible by standard configurations.
Hydrogenated amorphous carbon layers were deposited on BK7 glass in a plasma-assisted chemical vapor deposition
process. Low and high refracting films with thicknesses d ranging from 11 nm to 5.8 µm were produced having refractive
indices n between 1.68 and 2.41 and linear absorption coefficients of α~100 cm-1 and α~20000 cm-1 at 800 nm wavelength as a result of different plasma modes. Laser ablation thresholds Fth in dependence on d were determined using 30-fs laser pulses. Low absorbing layers show a constant Fth while Fth increases with rising d up to the optical penetration depth of light α-1 for high absorbing films.
The synthesis of polymerlike amorphous carbon (a-C:H) thin-films by microwave excited collisional hydrocarbon plasma process is reported. Stable and highly aromatic a-C:H were obtained containing significant inclusions of poly(p-phenylene vinylene) (PPV). PPV confers universal optoelectronic properties to the synthesized material. That is a-C:H with tailor-made refractive index are capable of becoming absorption-free in visible (red)-near infrared wavelength range. Production of large aromatic hydrocarbon including phenyl clusters and/or particles is attributed to enhanced coagulation of elemental plasma species under collisional plasma conditions. Detailed structural and morphological changes that occur in a-C:H during the plasma synthesis are also described.