GHz half wavelength contact acoustic microscopy (HaWaCAM): a feasibility study

The semiconductor industry needs to fit ever more devices per unit area to improve their performance; hence a trend towards increasingly complex structures by varying material combinations and 3D geometries with increasing aspect ratios. The new materials used may be optically opaque, posing problems for traditional optical metrology methods....

Development of a Beam Conditioning and Diagnostics System for the Laser Guide Star Facility of the ELT

We report on the development of a Beam Conditioning and Diagnostics System (BCDS) that will be employed in the Laser Projection System (LPS) of the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) of ESO. This conference article provides an overview about the detailed design of the BCDS and it summarizes the work of the development phase of this project. To this...

Feasibility of 4 GHz half wavelength contact acoustic microscopy (HaWaCAM)

Several methods are being researched to detect and characterize buried nanoscale structures in hard solid samples. The most common acoustic method is acoustic microscopy. An acoustic microscope is based on a single element transducer operating in pulse-echo mode. The acoustic waves are coupled into a sample using a liquid couplant (eg water) and...

Laser Launch Tube for LGS Systems

Optimization of acoustic coupling for bottom actuated scattering based subsurface scanning probe microscopy

The characterization of buried nanoscale structures nondestructively is an important challenge in a number of applications, such as defect detection and metrology in the semiconductor industry. A promising technique is Subsurface Scanning Probe Microscopy (SSPM), which combines ultrasound with Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). Initially, SSPM was...

Development of a sample clamp for GHZ subsurface probe microscopy

Improved sub-surface AFM using photothermal excitation

In this paper, we present an AFM based subsurface measurement technique that can be used for overlay and critical dimensions (CD) measurements through optically opaque layers. The proposed method uses the surface elasticity map to resolve the presence and geometry of subsurface structures. To improve the imaging performance of the AFM based...

Improved sub-surface AFM using photothermal excitation

Sub-surface Imaging with Photo Thermal Actuation

In the semiconductor industry, the need for characterization of subsurface features of wafers on a sub-nanometer level becomes ever more important. With Scanning Subsurface Probe Microscopy (SSPM), the smallest features can be measured with high resolution.

Electrostatically actuated probes for Scanning Subsurface Ultrasonic Resonance Frequency Microscopy

Scanning Subsurface Ultrasonic Force Microscopy (SSURFM) relies on high frequency ultrasound in combination with Atomic Force Microscopy to detect viscoelastic properties of buried materials with high spatial resolution. The key ingredient is a very high frequency ultrasound wave which is amplitude modulated at the sensing cantilevers resonance...

Optical satellite communication space terminal technology at TNO

Optical communications will complement radio frequency (RF) communications in the coming decades to enhance throughput, power efficiency and link security of satellite communication links. To enable optical communications technology for intersatellite links and (bi-directional) ground to satellite links, TNO develops a suite of technologies in...

Efficient and Stable Acoustical Coupling for GHz Subsurface Probe Microscopy

Many techniques are under development for the detection of subsurface defects or cracks. One such method is GHz subsurface probe microscopy (GHz SSPM). Here, modulated GHz elastic waves are transmitted through the bottom of a sample. The waves are scattered by buried features and detected using the probe of an atomic force microscope (AFM),...

Electromagnetic deformable mirror development at TNO

Over the last decade TNO has developed a deformable mirror concept using electromagnetic actuators with the main advantages of having very low non-linearity and hysteresis, low power consumption, and high inherent reliability of the actuators. TNO recently started a program to redesign the electromagnetic actuator to improve the actuator...