Surface profiler

L. Mattsson (a), P. J. Bolt (b) , S. Azcarate (c), E. Brousseau (d), B. Fillon (e), C. Fowler (f), E. Gelink (b), C. Griffiths (d), C. Khan Malek (g), S. Marson (h), A. Retolaza (c), A. Schneider (f), A. Schoth (i), A. Temun (a), P.
Tiquet (e), and G. Tosello (k)

(a) KTH – the Royal Institute of Technology, Department of Production Engineering,School of Industrial Engineering and Management, SE-10044 Stockholm, Sweden
(b) TNO Science and Industry, 5600 HE Eindhoven , The Netherlands
(c) Tekniker Technological Center, 20600 Eibar, Spain
(d) Cardiff University, Manufacturing Engineering Center (MEC), Cardiff CF 24 3AA, United Kingdom
(e) French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), Laboratory of Innovation for New Energy Technologies and Nanomaterials (LITEN), 38054, Grenoble, France
(f) Science and Technology Facilities Council, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL), Technology – Central Microstructure Facility, Harewell Science and Innovation Campus, Didcot, Oxfordshire, OX11 0QX, UK
(g) FEMTO-ST Institute, CNRS UMR 6174, LPMO Department, 25044 Besancon Cedex, France
(h) School of Applied Sciences, Cranfield University, Cranfield, Beds, MK43 0AL, UK
(i) University of Freiburg, Institute of Microsystem Technology (IMTEK), 79110 Freiburg, Germany
(k) Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Department of Manufacturing Engineering and Management (IPL), 2800 Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark

Abstract

Surface roughness of tiny micro machined features is not easy to verify. The statistical variation of the surface itself can be the limiting factor that hampers tolerance verification. In this paper we have studied this effect and we also test the performance of 10 different surface profilers over a very well specified surface area. For this area 6 profilers yielded the same result within a standard deviation window of ±6%. For other areas, on top of narrow bars and in narrow and deep channels, a much larger spread in the Round Robin results was found.