SPIE - Education Predicting, Modeling, and Interpreting Light Scattered by Surfaces SC492

The measurement of light scattered by surfaces can be used to locate and identify roughness, particulates, and defects on a wide variety of materials. Applications include the inspection of silicon wafers, optics, and storage media, characterization of thin film roughness, identification of objects in remote sensing, and prediction of optical system performance. The aim of this course is to provide tools to engineers and scientists to enable them to predict scattering for different sources, differentiate amongst different scattering sources, and to design instrumentation that maximizes sensitivity or differentiation amongst scattering sources for their specific application. Emphasis will be placed on the use of the SCATMECH library of scattering codes and the Modeled Integrated Scatter Tool (MIST) in order to minimize the mathematics that can often be a barrier to those who would otherwise be interested in using optical scatter. The measurement of scatter is emphasized in SC1003 taught by John Stover.