A new approach for measuring surface parameters by a capacitive sensor

Abstract

In this work we propose and study novel methodologies to characterize dielectric films and surface roughness on conducting substrates with a capacitance sensor. We show that it is possible to measure both, the dielectric constant and thickness of a dielectric film using a corrugated electrode and a flat electrode. Then we show that the statistical parameters of a rough surface with Gaussian statistics can be obtained from two capacitance measurements. In both cases we present results from numerical simulations. In addition, for the case of dielectric film characterization we present some preliminary experimental results to corroborate the proposed methodology.