Introduction to microscopes:

Need of microscopes!

• Several levels of structural information are of interest in research, process development, and reliability and failure analysis activities.

• The investigation of surface topography and morphology, including grain size and shape, grain boundaries, distribution of elements in the materials, existence of compounds, micro-cracking, formation of textured surfaces, etc., is more important to optimize the fabrication process.

• Furthermore, from industrial point of view, particularly from microelectronic device fabrication and optical coating technology, the cross-sectional views of multilayer structures where interfacial nature, substrate interactions, and geometry and perfection of electronic devices with associated conducting and insulating layers are very much essential.

• Therefore, microscopes are very much essential to understand the information down to atomic level and to optimize the fabrication process, resulting properties for commercializing the materials for products.

We shall thus cover the following topics systematically:

Concept of resolution:

As the resolution varies with the wavelength of the source utilized for the analysis, one needs to understand the concept of resolution.

Basic and principles of various scatterings:
The interaction between source and matter must be understood clearly to obtain the essential information from the matter.

Understanding of the instruments:
We shall briefly cover the major components of the different types of microscopes and the working principles of these components to understand the interaction processes which are taking places during the observation of the structural information.