Real-time optical characterization of thin film growth

The further spatial reduction together with stringent thickness and composition tolerances in manufacturing of advanced electronic and optical devices require new approaches to control the growth process as well as to improve the insight into the deposition process itself. The development of non-invasive, real-time, structure-specific analytical tools for characterizing phenomena occurring at surfaces and interfaces during thin film growth has therefore to address both, providing a detailed understanding of the thin film growth process and providing robust process control signals in real-time. This review gives an overview of the principles of angle resolved reflectance techniques applied to real-time thin film process monitoring, the study of surface reaction kinetics, and to growth process control. The capabilities of high-sensitive thin film growth monitoring and control are illustrated for the growth of III-V compounds under pulsed chemical beam epitaxy conditions, using p-polarized reflectance spectroscopy as an example.