Abstract
There is a great demand to measure the surface profiles of microstructures with high accuracy. However, conventional measurement techniques, including scanning electron microscopy (SEM) imaging, atomic force microscopy (AFM) scanning, mechanical surface profiler, require often destructive process or may be difficult to measure with a wafer scale. In this paper, we implement a novel measurement technique for the surface profiles of microstructures fabricated by standard MEMS techniques using an optical scanner based on a DVD pick-up module, which is widely used in optical storages installed within PC or laptops. 2D images for the fabricated microstructures are successfully generated using the intensity signal of reflection light from the surface topologies and the depths of the microstructures are measured simultaneously using focus error signal from four-quadrant photodiodes (PD). The advantages of the proposed methods are non-destructive, non-contact, do not require any sample preparation and can be carried out with a wafer scale. It is shown that the proposed optical scanner can be used as an alternative measurement system with high performance and cost-effectively, compared to conventional MEMS measurement techniques.
