• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.9-15
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• 2003

This paper proposes a thickness measurement method of silicon-oxide and poly-silicon film deposited on 12" silicon wafer for spin etcher. Halogen lamp is used as a light source for generating a wide-band spectrum, which is guided and focused on the wafer surface through a optical fiber cable. Interference signal from the film is detected by optical sensor to determine the thickness of the film using spectrum analysis and several signal processing techniques including curve-fitting and adaptive filtering. Test wafers with three kinds of priori-known films, polysilicon(300 nm), silicon-oxide(500 nm) and silicon-oxide(600 nm), are measured while the wafer is spinning at 20 Hz and DI water flowing on the wafer surface. From experiment results the algorithm presented in the paper is proved to be effective with accuracy of maximum 0.8% error.rror.

• Current Optics and Photonics
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• v.1 no.5
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• pp.505-513
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• 2017

Measuring the thickness of thin films is strongly required in the display industry. In recent years, as the size of a pattern has become smaller, the substrate has become larger. Consequently, measuring the thickness of the thin film over a wide area with low spatial sampling size has become a key technique of manufacturing-yield management. Interferometry is a well-known metrology technique that offers low spatial sampling size and the ability to measure a wide area; however, there are some limitations in measuring the thickness of the thin film. This paper proposes a method to calculate the thickness of the thin film in the following two steps: first, pre-estimation of the thickness with the phase at the peak position of the interferogram at the bottom surface of the thin film, using white-light phase-shift interferometry; second, accurate correction of the measurement by fitting the interferogram with the theoretical pattern through the estimated thickness. Feasibility and accuracy of the method has been verified by comparing measured values of photoresist pattern samples, manufactured with the halftone display process, to those measured by AFM. As a result, an area of $880{\times}640$ pixels could be measured in 3 seconds, with a measurement error of less than 12%.

• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.201-208
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• 2017

A finite element analysis is proposed to study the effect of specimen dimensions on lateral diffusion of hydrogen during hydrogen permeation flux measurements. The error of measurement on thick specimens because of 1D diffusion approximation may be as much as 70%. A critical condition for accurate measurements is to designate the area of hydrogen monitoring/exit surface smaller than the area of hydrogen charging/entry surface. For thin to medium thickness specimens (ratio of thickness to specimen radius of 5:10 and below), the charging surface should be maximized and the monitoring surface should be minimized. In case of relatively thick specimens (ratio of thickness to specimen radius above of 5:10), use of a hydrogen-diffusion barrier on the specimen boundaries is recommended. It would completely eliminate lateral losses of hydrogen, but cannot eliminate the deviation towards 2D diffusion near the side edges. In such a case, the charging surface should be maximized and the monitoring surface should be as closer in dimension as the charging surface. A regression analysis was carried out and an analytical relationship between the maximum measurement error and the specimen dimensions is proposed.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.151-159
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• 2015

In this study, we developed an automated contact-type thickness measurement machine that continuously and precisely measures the thickness of a PCB module product using multi-LVDT sensors. The system contains a measurement part to automatically measure the thickness in real time according to the set conditions with an alignment supply unit and unloading unit to separate OK and NG products. The sensors were calibrated before assembly in the measuring machine, and precision and accuracy performance tests were also performed to reduce uncertainty errors in the measurement machine. In the calibration test, the precision errors of the LVDT sensor were determined to be $1-3{\mu}m$ as 0.1% at the measuring range. A measurement error of 0.8 mm and 1.0 mm thickness test standards were found to be $1{\mu}m$ and $4{\mu}m$, and the standard deviations of two 1.0 mm products were measured as $14{\mu}m$ and $8{\mu}m$, respectively. In the measurement system analysis, the accuracies of test PCB standards were found to be $2{\mu}m$ and $3{\mu}m$, respectively. From the results of gage repeatability and reproducibility (R & R) crossed, we found that the machine is suitable for the measurement and process control in the mass production line as 7.92% of total gage R & R and in seven distinct categories. The maximum operating speed was limited at 13 pcs/min, showing a value good enough to measure.

• Journal of the Optical Society of Korea
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.236-243
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• 2014

Surface profiling and film thickness measurement play an important role for inspection. White light interferometry is widely used for engineering surfaces profiling, but its applications are limited primarily to opaque surfaces with relatively simple optical reflection behavior. The conventional bucket algorithm had given inaccurate surface profiles because of the phase error that occurs when a thin-film exists on the top of the surface. Recently, reflectometry and white light scanning interferometry were combined to measure the film thickness and surface profile. These techniques, however, have found that many local minima exist, so it is necessary to make proper initial guesses to reach the global minimum quickly. In this paper we propose combing reflectometry and white light scanning interferometry to measure the thin-film thickness and surface profile. The key idea is to divide the measurement into two states; reflectometry mode and interferometry mode to obtain the thickness and profile separately. Interferogram modeling, which considers transparent thin-film, was proposed to determine parameters such as height and thickness. With the proposed method, the ambiguity in determining the thickness and the surface has been eliminated. Standard thickness specimens were measured using the proposed method. Multi-layered film measurement results were compared with AFM measurement results. The comparison showed that surface profile and thin-film thickness can be measured successfully through the proposed method.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.78-81
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• 2004

A technical performance of the coating depends greatly on the thickness of painting film or coating film. Therefore the confirmed report of the technique to measure accurately is essential to the coating film thickness for the assessment about a coating quality performance. In this paper, two gap sensors - eddy current gap sensor and capacitance gap sensor - which has a different operating principle were used to measure the thickness of a nonmagnetic substance coating film such as paint, enamel or ceramic that was coated on the metallic material. A capacitance gap sensor was used to measure the distance between the sensor head and a coating film and an eddy current gap sensor to measure the distance between the sensor head and a base metal. Then the thickness of a coating film was obtained by the difference of two measurement value. At this result, the suggested dual sensor can measure an arbitrary film thickness to be coated on a base metal as the measurement value of coating thickness exists accurately within the 2％ error.

• Journal of Veterinary Clinics
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.268-272
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of reconstruction kernel, and slice thickness on the accuracy of spiral CT-based volume assessment over a range of object sizes typical of synthetic simulated tumor. Spiral CT scanning was performed at various reconstruction kernels (soft tissue, standard, bone), and slice thickness (1, 2, 3 mm) using a phantom made of gelatin and 10 synthetic simulated tumors of different sizes (diameter 3.0-12.0 mm). Three-dimensional volume assessments were obtained using an automated software tool. Results were compared with the reference volume by calculating the percentage error. Statistical analysis was performed using ANOVA and setting statistical significance at P < 0.05. In general, smaller slice thickness and larger sphere diameters produced more accurate volume assessment than larger slice thickness and smaller sphere diameter. The measured volumes were larger than the actual volumes by a common factor depending on slice thickness; in 100HU simulated tumors that had statistically significant, 1 mm slice thickness produced on average 27.41%, 2 mm slice thickness produced 45.61%, 3 mm slice thickness produced 93.36% overestimates of volume. However, there was no statistically significant difference in volume error for spiral CT scans taken with techniques where only reconstruction kernel was changed. These results supported that synthetic simulated tumor size, slice thickness were significant parameters in determining volume measurement errors. For an accurate volumetric measurement of an object, it is critical to select an appropriate slice thickness and to consider the size of an object.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
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• v.1 no.1 s.1
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• pp.36-40
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• 2005

TRISO (Tri-Isotropic)-coated fuel particle is widely applied due to its higher stability at high temperature and its efficient retention capability for fission products in the HTGR (high temperature gas-cooled reactor), one of the highly efficient Generation IV reactors. The typical ball-type TRISO-coated fuel particle with a diameter of about 1 mm is composed of a nuclear fuel particle as a kernel and of outer coating layers. The coating layers consist of a buffer PyC, inner PyC, SiC, and outer PyC layer. In this study, a digital image processing algorithm is proposed to automatically measure the thickness of the coating layers. An FBP (filtered backprojection) algorithm was applied to reconstruct the CT image using virtual X-ray radiographic images for a simulated TRISO-coated fuel particle. The automatic measurement algorithm was developed to measure the coating thickness for the reconstructed image with noises. The boundary lines were automatically detected, then the coating thickness was circularly by the algorithm. The simulation result showed that the measurement error rate was less than 1.4%.

• Current Optics and Photonics
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.29-33
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• 2017

A method for analysis of thin film thickness in spectroscopic reflectometry is proposed. In spectroscopic reflectometry, there has been a trade-off between accuracy and computation speed using the conventional analysis algorithms. The trade-off originated from the nonlinearity of spectral reflectance with respect to film thickness. In this paper, the spectral phase is extracted from spectral reflectance, and the thickness of the film can be calculated by linear equations. By using the proposed method, film thickness can be measured very fast with high accuracy. The simulation result shows that the film thickness can be acquired with high accuracy. In the simulation, analysis error is lower than 0.01% in the thickness range from 100 nm to 4 um. The experiments also show good accuracy. Maximum error is under $40{\AA}$ in the thickness range $3,000-20,000{\AA}$. The experiments present that the proposed method is very fast. It takes only 2.6 s for volumetric thickness analysis of 640*480 pixels. The study suggests that the method can be a useful tool for the volumetric thickness measurement in display and semiconductor industries.

• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.33-39
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• 2015

Pipe wall-thinning by flow-accelerated corrosion and various types of erosion is significant damage in secondary system piping of nuclear power plants(NPPs). All NPPs in Korea have management programs to ensure pipe integrity from degradation mechanisms. Ultrasonic test(UT) is widely used for pipe wall thickness measurement. Numerous UT measurements have been performed during scheduled outages. Wall-thinning rates are determined conservatively according to several evaluation methods developed by Electric Power Research Institute(EPRI). The issue of reliability caused by measurement error should be considered in the process of evaluation. The reliability analysis method was developed for single and multiple measurement data in the previous researches. This paper describes the application results of reliability analysis method to real measurement data during scheduled outage and proved its benefits.