Combination of surface characterization techniques for investigating optical thin-film components.

To meet the requirements of comprehensively characterizing the morphology of thin films and substrates, a suitable combination of different measuring techniques should be chosen, i.e., a nonoptical surface profile measurement should be used together with optical analysis. It is demonstrated on selected examples of fluoride and oxide films that the use of atomic force microscopy and light scattering fulfills the demand of appropriate quantitative characterization over a sufficiently large range of bandwidths.