In situ etch rate measurements of thin film combinatorial libraries

We demonstrate the use of optical reflection mapping as an in situ characterization tool to evaluate the corrosion rate of compositionally graded thin film combinatorial libraries coated with a commercial glass etching paste. A multi-channel fiber-optically coupled CCD-array-based spectrometer was used to collect a series of reflectance maps from 300 to 1000 nm versus time. The thin film interference oscillations in the measured reflection spectra have been fitted to determine the film thickness as a function of time and thereby the etch rate. Application of this technique to an In–Mo–O composition spread library is presented as an example.