Title: Advanced characterisation methodology for engineered surfaces

Authors: Ritwik Verma; Jay Raja

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Science, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC 28223, USA ' Department of Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Science, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC 28223, USA

Abstract: In the recent years there has been an increasing interest in manufacturing products where surface topography plays a functional role. These surfaces are called engineered surfaces and are used in a variety of industries like semiconductor, data storage, micro-optics, MEMS etc. Engineered surfaces are designed, manufactured and inspected to meet a variety of specifications such as size, position, geometry and surface finish to control physical, chemical, optical and electrical properties of products. As manufacturing industries strive towards shrinking form factor resulting in miniaturisation of surface features, measurement of such micro and nano scale surfaces is becoming more challenging. Great strides have been made in the area of instrumentation to capture surface data, but the area of algorithms and procedures to determine form, size and orientation information of surface features still lacks the advancement needed to support the characterisation requirements of R&D and high volume manufacturing.

Keywords: engineered surfaces; structured surfaces; surface characterisation; surface topography; surface metrology.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPTECH.2013.057053

International Journal of Precision Technology, 2013 Vol.3 No.3, pp.261 - 276

Published online: 06 Oct 2013 *

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