Effects of accumulated film layers on the accuracy of quartz film thickness monitors

The effect of accumulation layers on the accuracy of quartz thin-film thickness monitors is evaluated. Use of an expanded plane wave ultrasonic propagation theory correctly accounts for observed experimental data. The magnitude of the maximum errors calculated for simply reversing the order of a series of aluminum gold deposits is on the order of 5%. If one totally neglects intervening layers, multiple film propagation and nonlinearity can produce errors greater than 50%.