Hi Vic,
the probe developed allows, in principle, to measure sidewall roughness in
hole... up to 1mm deep, and about 25um diameter. I don't believe the AFM probe
of IBM can do that... but, OK, I never used it :-)
Moreover, the depth profile resolution seems to be about 70nm and not 500nm.
Thus the tool developed here has certainly a use, but, it is true that it may
not be what the original poster wanted and IBM probe may be the best suited...
for his application.

BTW, on a historical note, the first idea of the probe comes from the team of
Professor Masuzawa at Tokyo University... a long time ago (more than a
decade...) - at a time where when I saw MEMS written I just thought it was
misspelled for 'nems' (which is how the Chinese spring rolls are called in
French :-)

Happy Chinese new year to everyone!
Franck
PS: who cares about the citizenship of inventors? Intelligence has no
boundary!

"-----Original Message-----
"From: Vic Kley [mailto:[email protected]]
"Sent: Friday, 25 January, 2002 16:12
"To: [email protected]
"Subject: Re: [mems-talk] measurement of sidewall roughness
"
"
"Fabrice and Emer
"
"The first link you provided is bogus. The proper link to the paper of
"interest is http://www.fujita3.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~limms/
"
"However the paper clearly states that the resolution limit of
"their reported
"method is presently 500nm! This is unusable and again it is silly to
"continue looking when in fact the IBM SXM series sidewall profiling AFM
"already resolves better then 1nm and has been doing so for a
"decade.  These
"microscopes have been sold and are in use in Japan where
"apparently they
"very much like to reinvent the wheel in collaboration with the
"French. The
"funny thing is the IBM scientist who invented the sidewall
"profiling AFM
"about 13 years ago is a Frenchman!
"
"Vic Kley
"_______________________________________________
"[email protected] mailing list: to unsubscribe or change your list
"options, visit http://mail.mems-exchange.org/mailman/listinfo/mems-talk
"Hosted by the MEMS Exchange, providers of MEMS processing services.
"Visit us at http://www.mems-exchange.org/
"