Microscopy and Microanalysis

Table of Contents - 2006 - Volume 12, Issue 02  


MICROSCOPY TECHNIQUES

Measuring Surface Topography with Scanning Electron Microscopy. I. EZEImage: A Program to Obtain 3D Surface Data

Ezequiel  Ponz  a1 , Juan Luis  Ladaga  a2 and Rita Dominga  Bonetto  a1 c1
a1 Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo en Ciencias Aplicadas Dr. Jorge J. Ronco (CINDECA) CONICET—UNLP, 47 No. 257-CC 59, 1900 La Plata, Argentina
a2 Facultad de Ingeniería de la Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires, Departamento de Física—Laboratorio de Láser, Paseo Colón 850, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina

Article author query
ponz e   [PubMed][Google Scholar] 
ladaga jl   [PubMed][Google Scholar] 
bonetto rd   [PubMed][Google Scholar] 

Abstract

Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is widely used in the science of materials and different parameters were developed to characterize the surface roughness. In a previous work, we studied the surface topography with fractal dimension at low scale and two parameters at high scale by using the variogram, that is, variance vs. step log–log graph, of a SEM image. Those studies were carried out with the FERImage program, previously developed by us. To verify the previously accepted hypothesis by working with only an image, it is indispensable to have reliable three-dimensional (3D) surface data. In this work, a new program (EZEImage) to characterize 3D surface topography in SEM has been developed. It uses fast cross correlation and dynamic programming to obtain reliable dense height maps in a few seconds which can be displayed as an image where each gray level represents a height value. This image can be used for the FERImage program or any other software to obtain surface topography characteristics. EZEImage also generates anaglyph images as well as characterizes 3D surface topography by means of a parameter set to describe amplitude properties and three functional indices for characterizing bearing and fluid properties.

(Received November 8 2004)
(Accepted May 23 2005)


Key Words: dense height map; dynamic programming; fast cross correlation; program; 3D surface topography in SEM.

Correspondence:
c1 Corresponding author. E-mail: bonetto@quimica.unlp.edu.ar