Novel fast spectroscopic rotating-polarizer ellipsometer

Abstract

A fast spectroscopic rotating-polarizer ellipsometer has been developed. The machine is equipped with a cascade arc as a light source, a 1024 element linear photodiode array for parallel data processing, and a fast data acquisition interface that allows for hardware averaging of the data prior to transmission to the controlling computer. The ellipsometer has been mounted on an ultrahigh vacuum chamber. As an example the sublimation of an As cap layer from ErAs/GaAs(100) was studied in situ. Fourier spectra in the range from 1.5 to 4.0 eV with an accuracy and precision better than 2×10−2 and 3×10−4, respectively, are obtained within 1.7 s. The spectral response of the photodiode array is presently the factor limiting the energy range.

A new design of a bright cascaded arc light source: measurements and simulations

“…Due to its high intensity broadband VUV light emission, the cascaded arc is used as a radiation standard, as presented in [5][6][7][8]. The cascaded arc was introduced as a light source in spectroscopic ellipsometry in [9,10] and in Fourier transform infrared absorption spectroscopy in [11]. Especially the high intensity light output has been used in a Fourier transform phase shift cavity ring down absorption experiment, as reported in [12].…”