Determination of thickness and refractive index of SiO2 thin films using the cross-entropy global optimization method

Silicon dioxide (SiO2) is a material that is abundant in nature and has wide application in semiconductor and insulating devices. In this work, a set of six SiO2 samples were grown on a Sigma-Aldrich Silicon substrate, varying the growth time and temperature. This set of samples were grown using times of 10 and 12h and temperatures of 800, 900, and 1000 ºC, under ambient atmosphere. After film growth, reflectance measurements were performed on the films and the substrate, using the Stellarnet UV-VIS-NIR spectrophotometer between 194 and 1081.5 nm. These measurements were modeled using a global optimization method, called Cross-entropy, together with the Bootstrapping resampling technique, seeking to robustly and statistically determine the thin film refractive index as a function of the wavelength and its thickness. To estimate the refractive index of the SiO2 thin film, the Cauchy model was used. For the substrate, reflectance measurements were used. The method proved to be efficient, presenting thickness values that were validated according to growth parameters and literature data. This method proved to be an important and low-cost tool, compared to traditional methods, to help in the steps of building thin films for semiconductor and insulating devices, thus improving their physical properties and enabling the development of new devices.