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Japanese Journal of Applied Physics 62, 108003 (2023) BRIEF NOTE
https://doi.org/10.35848/1347-4065/acff31

Maximum thickness determinable by imaging ellipsometry

Lianhua Jin1*, Yoriatsu Kitamura1, Eiichi Kondoh1, and Bernard Gelloz2
1
Integrated Graduate School of Medicine, Engineering, and Agricultural Sciences, University of Yamanashi, Kofu, Yamanashi 400-8511, Japan
2
Graduate School of Science, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Aichi 464-8601, Japan
*
E-mail: lianhua@yamanashi.ac.jp
Received May 2, 2023; revised September 26, 2023; accepted October 2, 2023; published online October 13, 2023

As a hybrid of single-point measurement ellipsometry and optical microscopy, imaging ellipsometry possesses capability to characterize optical
constants and/or thickness distribution of sample surfaces. For single-point measurement spectroscopic ellipsometry, the preferred limit of the film
thickness is less than 5 μm. The thicker the film, the longer the required probe wavelength. In this note, the maximum thickness that imaging
ellipsometry can determine was analyzed in terms of the measurement area and the refractive index of the thin film. This thickness criterion will be
helpful to estimate the ability of imaging ellipsometry with high spatial resolution to evaluate a thin film thickness.
© 2023 The Japan Society of Applied Physics

Spectroscopic ellipsometry is a standard single-point measure- or,

ment tool for evaluation of thin films and characterizing surfaces
in such fields as semiconductor and biosensor industries.1) In an
ellipsometry measurement, the ambient-film-substrate system
was often modeled as shown in Fig. 1, where the film of
thickness d1 has parallel-plane boundaries and is sandwiched
between semi-infinite ambient and substrate media.2) In some
applications, the film consists of several thin layers.1) Here, a
single layer film system was used in our analysis of the
determinable maximum film thickness. The oblique incident
beam (a plane wave) gives rise to a resultant reflected beam in
the ambient and a resultant transmitted beam in the substrate.
The refracted beam inside the film subsequently undergoes
multiple reflections and transmissions at the interfaces between
(i) the ambient (medium 0) and the thin film (medium 1), and
(ii) the thin film and the substrate (medium 2). The phase
difference a between each of the adjacent beams from the thin
film into the ambient medium is given by2)
4N1pd1 4N1pd1 2
a= cos q1 = (N1 - N0 2 sin2 q0 )1 / 2 , (1 )
l l
where l , N0 , N1, q0, q1 are the free-space wavelength, the
complex indices of the ambient and the film, the angle of
incidence, the angle of refraction in the film, respectively.
Denoting the Fresnel reflection and transmission coefficients at
the 0–1 (1–0) and 1–2 interfaces by r01, t01(r10, t10 ) and r12, t12,
respectively, the resultant reflected amplitude is a summation
of successive partial plane waves with a geometric series
r = r01 + t01t10 r12 e-j2b + t01t10 r10 r12
2 -j 4 b
e + 
+ t01t10 r10m - 1r12m e-j2mb , (2 )
where m denotes the mth partial reflection plane wave
throughout from the thin film (m = 0 is for the plane wave
reflected on the thin film surface only), b is the phase angle
equal to a/2, r01 = -r10, and t01 t01 = 1 - r01
2
. For m = ¥ ,
2)
the summation yields
r01 + r12 e-j2b
r= . (3 )
1 + r10 r12 e-j2b
For finite series, the addition becomes
1 - [r10 r12 exp ( - i2b )]m
r = r01 + t01t10 r12 e-i2b , (4 )
1 + r10 r12 exp ( - i2b )
1 - (-r01 r12 ) m exp (-i 2mb )
r = r01 + (1 - r01
2
) r12 e-i 2b . (5 )
1 + r01 r12 exp (-i 2b )
The subscript p or s will be added to the Fresnel reflection
and transmission coefficients in Eqs. (2)–(5) for p or s
polarized light, accordingly.
The traditional ellipsometric parameters Ψ and Δ, which
an ellipsometer measures, are defined by1,2)
rp
tan (Y) exp ( jD) = . (6)
rs
For single-point measurement ellipsometry, the reflected
amplitude in Eq. (6) is calculated by using Eq. (3). It is
assumed that the refracted beam infinitely repeats partial
reflections, and there is no lateral limitation along direction of
x axis (Fig. 1). The preferred limit of the film thickness for
most visible-to-NIR ellipsometry measurement is considered
as less than 5 μm.3)
Imaging ellipsometry is a hybrid of single-point ellipso-
metry and optical microscopy. It characterizes surfaces with
micro-patterns or non-uniform distribution from a single
measurement.1,4–11) The spatial resolution of an imaging
ellipsometer depends on that of the microscope.12) The
imaging ellipsometer collects reflection beams with a micro-
array sensor through the imaging system, and every micro-
array pixel element is used as a single ellipsometer. The
larger the numerical aperture of the imaging system, the
smaller the spatial resolution, and then the more details of
film thickness distribution can be evaluated.
When the spatial resolution of imaging ellipsometry
instrument is about a few micrometers,13) which means one
pixel of the microarray sensor will collect reflection beams in
the area of micrometer order, will the calculation Eq. (3) still
hold for the resultant reflected amplitude to be used in
Eq. (6)? What is the thickness limit of thin film for imaging
ellipsometry instrumentation?
To address above issues, we carried out simulations using
the optical model of the thin film on a silicon substrate at the
angle of incidence of 55° (at wavelength 632.8 nm). The
lower the extinction coefficient of the thin film material, the
larger the measurable thickness of the film. Assuming an
Air/SiO2/Si system, with a SiO2 film thickness of 1000 nm,

108003-1 © 2023 The Japan Society of Applied Physics

Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 62, 108003 (2023)
Fig. 1. Optical model of the ambient (0)—film (1)—substrate (2) system. d1 is the film thickness, l1 is the period of the zig-zag wave along x direction, l is
travelling distance of mth partially reflected beam along x direction. q0 is the angle of incidence in the ambient, and q1, q2 are the angles of refraction in the film
and substrate, respectively.
calculation results of intensity of the single mth reflection
beam is illustrated in Fig. 2(a). The refractive indices of Si
and SiO2 at the wavelength of 632.8 nm used in this note are
3.8640 + 0.015827i14) and 1.4761,15) respectively. The
intensity was normalized with the intensity of the single
0th reflection beam. We also assumed that a pixel element of
the microarray exactly collects up to mth combined reflection
beams. The resulting ellipsometric parameters Ψ and Δ
versus m are depicted in Figs. 2(b) and 2(c), respectively.
In this simulation, the resultant reflection amplitude is
calculated by using Eq. (5).
Figure 2(a) shows that the intensity of the individual beam
of light partially reflected on the film surface only (m = 0) is
smaller than that of the first light beam reflected out of
through thin film (m = 1). The intensity of the individual
partially reflected beam after suffering multireflection inside
the film decrease significantly with increasing m. For
example, the intensity of 4th reflection beam is about
1/20 000 of that of the 0th reflection beam. Though the
intensity of individual beam is very small, when combined
reflection beams is collected by a detector, individual beam
with weak intensity manifests the effect on the phase of the
resultant reflection beam. Figures 2(b) and 2(c) show that
when the detector element collects up to the first 5th partially
reflected light, the ellipsometric parameters are not same as
those calculated using Eq. (3), but changes outstandingly
according to the amounts of partially reflected beam col-
lected. When a detector element collects up to 9th partially
reflected light, the ellipsometric parameters will be signifi-
cantly close to those obtained with the infinite multireflection
model.
Experiencing multireflection, how long distance along x
direction the refracted light propagates inside the thin film?
The period of the zigzag wave inside the thin film is given by,
as shown in Fig. 1
l1 = 2d1 tan q1.
For the mth reflected light out of the thin film, the propaga-
tion distance l along x direction is l (m ) = ml1. For SiO2 film
L. Jin et al.
used in above simulation, l1 » 1.7 m m, and then
l (9) = 9l1 » 15.7 m m. This means that for ellipsometry
measurements with the area, for example, less than 3 μm
along x direction (y direction has no limitation), the total
partially reflected beams would not be collected by a single
detector element, and meanwhile, ellisometric parameters and
then the thickness of the thin film will not be extracted
correctly by using Eq. (3).
To be able to extract the film thickness through the same
way as the single point ellipsometry measurement, what is
the limitation of the thickness of the film? It will depend on
the factors such as the optical constant of the thin film,
incident angle, the area to be measured through a single pixel
of the microarrays.
For single-point measurement ellipsometry, the angle of
incidence is often set at close to the Brewster angle of the
substrate. The thickness films on the silicon substrate were,
then, measured at the angle of incidence around 70°. For
imaging ellipsometry, to conform to physical limitation of the
optical system configuration of the imaging ellipsometry
instrument,4) the angle of incidence is set at around 50°. In
following simulation, we assume the incident angle as 55°.
Assuming the area to be measured along x direction is
l = 3 μm, the single pixel of the detector array collects up to
m = 9th partially reflected beam, the Re n of complex index
of the thin film is 1.45–3.20, the Im k of complex index is
0.00 (no absorption), the maximum thickness of thin film
determinable is illustrated in Fig. 3(a). Referring to Fig. 1 and
using Eq. (7), the maximum thickness is obtained from the
following equation
l1 l/m
d max = = . (8 )
2 tan (q1)
⎣ 1
(
2 tan ⎡sin-1 n0 sin 0 ⎤
n
⎦
)
From Fig. 3(a) and Eq. (8), it was seen that the larger the
(7 ) index, the thicker the maximum determinable film thickness.
For the SiO2 film, the maximum thickness is about 249.8 nm.
If l is 1 μm, the thickness will be down to about 83.3 nm. The
higher the resolution, the thinner the determinable thickness.
108003-2 © 2023 The Japan Society of Applied Physics
Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 62, 108003 (2023)
(a)
(b)
(c)
Fig. 2. (a) Intensity of the individual mth reflection beam for Air/SiO2/Si
system at the angle of incidence of 55°. The refractive indices of Si and SiO2
used are 3.8640 + 0.015827i and 1.4761 at the wavelength 632.8 nm,
respectively. The intensity was normalized with the intensity of the single 0th
reflection beam shown in Fig. 1. Ellipsometric parameters (b) Ψ and (c) Δ
versus m obtained by assuming a pixel element of the microarray exactly
collecting up to mth combined reflection beams.
In Eq. (8), since the value of m significantly impacts the
maximum thickness measurement under a desired lateral
spatial resolution, it should be carefully handled to satisfy the
condition that ellipsometric parameters Ψ and Δ, obtained
from reflected amplitude calculated using Eqs. (4) or (5),
close to those obtained from the reflected amplitude calcu-
lated using Eq. (3). The Eq. (8) can also provide necessary l
of imaging ellipsometry for measurement of a desired
maximum film thickness. For example, to measure the
thickness of the SiO2 film with the maximum thickness of
1 μm, l is required to be over 15.7 μm at the incident angle of
108003-3
L. Jin et al.
Fig. 3. The maximum thickness of thin film determinable versus the
refractive index of thin film. The incident angle, the area to be measured
along x direction (y direction has no limitation), and extinction coefficient
were assumed as q0 = 55°, l = 3 μm, k = 0, respectively.
55° and wavelength of 632.8 nm. Here, m is continuously
assumed as 9.
In this note, the maximum thickness that imaging ellipso-
metry can determine was analyzed in terms of the measure-
ment area and the refractive index of the thin film. The
smaller the measurement area of the instrument and the
refractive index of the film material, the thinner the maximum
determinable film thickness. For thin films with large extinc-
tion coefficient k, repeatable multireflection number will be
small, and due to small m, d max can be larger in according to
Eq. (8). In fact, the thin film with large k and thickness will
not be transparent for ellipsometry measurement, conse-
quently, the measurable thickness with ellipsometry is
much thinner than that of film with no absorption or low k.
For example, for aluminum film, the measurable thickness
with ellipsometry is about up to tens of nanometers, then
when l is 1 μm, these thicknesses can be extracted with the
same approach as single-point measurement ellipsometry.
When the values of n0 and n1 are unknown, the maximum
thickness cannot be determined from Eq. (8). In this case, the
film thickness up to tens of nanometers is recommended to be
able to conduct non-compromising measurement with ima-
ging ellipsometry.
In practical measurement, the light detector may not
collect exactly up to mth combined reflection beams. The
simple Eq. (8) still provides thickness criterion which will
be helpful for estimation of applicability of imaging
ellipsometry with high spatial resolution into evaluation of
thin film thickness. In future work, we will work on analysis
of the resultant ellipsometric parameters when a pixel
element of the detector array collects partial reflection
beams in the point of wave view by employing finite
difference time domain method.
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© 2023 The Japan Society of Applied Physics