Improving Step Height and Pitch Measurements Using the Calibrated Atomic Force Microscope

Published

January 1, 1998

Author(s)

R Koning, Ronald G. Dixson, Joseph Fu, V W. Tsai, Theodore V. Vorburger

Abstract

The most important industrial application of Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) is probably the accurate measurement of geometrical dimensions of small surface structures. In order to maintain the instrument''s performance and to achieve the high accuracy often necessary in these applications, the instrument''s scales have to be calibrated regularly. Scale calibrations can be performed in an easy and appropriate way by using pitch and step height standards. In order to calibrate standards especially designed for this purpose, we have built the calibrated AFM (C-AFM). Details of the design, examples of its performance and uncertainty considerations have already been published. Here we will only report on the progress made during the last year. It includes improvements of the calibration of capacitance displacement sensor of the z-stage, refinements and further validations of the uncertainty budgets and the first calibration performed for an outside customer.

Proceedings Title

Proceedings of 3rd Seminar on Quantitative Microscopy

Conference Location

PTB, Braunschweig, 1, GE

Conference Title

PTB-Report F-34

Pub Type

Conferences

Keywords

atomic force microscopy, metrology, pitch, step height

Citation

Koning, R. , Dixson, R. , Fu, J. , Tsai, V. and Vorburger, T. (1998), Improving Step Height and Pitch Measurements Using the Calibrated Atomic Force Microscope, Proceedings of 3rd Seminar on Quantitative Microscopy, PTB, Braunschweig, 1, GE (Accessed October 8, 2025)