Monitoring of atomic layer deposition by incremental dielectric reflection

An optical method for in situ diagnostics of atomic layer deposition, based on the measuring of the reflectivity of a p-polarized light in fully transparent systems, is proposed and analyzed by using a classical four-phase approximation. The method is applied to the monitoring of TiO2 growth. It is shown that the sensitivity of the method is high if one uses the angles of incidence close to the Brewster angle of the substrate. The method is called incremental dielectric reflection.