Log-Log Roughness Spectroscopy

This initiative to provide a direct-space interpretable measure of roughness as a function of feature size resulted in requests by both Journal of Microscopy and Journal of Computer-Assisted Microscopy to write articles related thereto. Two Microscopy Society of America papers on this subject are listed below, along with a web link that will provide on-line access.

"Log-log scale roughness spectroscopy of surfaces"
P. Fraundorf and B. Armbruster Proc. 51st Annual Meeting of the Microscopy Society of America (San Francisco Press, 1993) p224-225.

"Scanned-probe microscope roughness spectroscopy"
P. Fraundorf and B. Armbruster Proc. 51st Annual Meeting of the Microscopy Society of America (San Francisco Press, 1993) p530-531.

For a closer look, check out our on-line scanned tip and electron image lab references.

Followup investigations include the "fingerprinting" in this way of known surfaces (as well as data artifacts) ranging from remote sensing data on the topography of planetary surfaces, down through the evolving fingerprint of a surface on which vacuum evaporation, sputtering, CVD or electroplating is underway, to fingerprints of the flattest surfaces known to man (e.g. that of reconstructed silicon wafers cut within minutes or seconds of a major crystallographic zone axis).

Followup interface work separately involves the development of software (e.g. in Java and/or Visual BASIC) for calculating such spectra from experimental images.

Related projects include: SPM Instrument Response, and Un-Biased Fourier Phase Estimation.