On-Wafer Measurement System for Combinatiorial Magnetic Thin Film Libraries

As magnetic thin-film systems became part of complex industrial applications, their composition increasingly became more complicated. A means is needed to efficiently develop and systematically characterized magnetic, electronic, and mechanical properties of advanced thin-film systems. New metrological systems are required that are capable of making on-wafer measurements on large number of sites over a large region of parameter space. Combinatorial materials techniques involve fabrication of libraries with a large number of on-wafer sites, metrologies that systematically characterize these libraries are needed. This project proposes to solve an important materials characterization problem of combinatorial film libraries. The completion of this project will result in a multi-sensor magnetic properties measurement capability and paradigm for rapidly characterizing combinatorial magnetic thin-film libraries deposited on wafers. A novel scanning system will be developed and integrated with multiple sensor types (MOKE probes and Hall microprobes). This system will obtain magnetic property data on combinatorial film libraries deposited on 37-millimeter diameter wafers. The system design is such that new sensor technologies (as they become available) can be added in order to achieve more complete magnetic properties analyses. High throughput, which is one of the system parameters, is essential to keep pace combinatorial library deposition methods