Novel Sensors for Control of Thin Film Deposition

The objectives of the proposed effort are to develop two novel sensors for measuring the product of the film stress with the film thickness, and for measuring the film thickness in situ and in real time during magnetron sputter deposition of thin films. The novel features of these sensors are that they physically move with the production substrates inside the deposition chamber, and that they use substrate materials identical to those used in production. The data from these two sensors will be combined to give a measurement of the mechanical stress in the film as the film is being fabricated. Since the relationship between film stress and processing conditions already is well-documented for magnetron sputter deposition, this stress measurement can be used as input for intelligent film deposition. A preliminary wavelet-based denoising and feature extraction algorithm will be developed. Laboratory simulations will be performed to demonstrate both the sensor feasibility and the analysis methods.