Spectroscopic Ellipsometry based technics have been now adopted in various fields as contact less metrology.

The ellipsometry is an optical technique devoted to the analysis of surfaces. It is based on the measurement of the variation of the polarization state of the light after reflection on a plane surface. The ellipsometry technique has been discovered one hundred years ago but it is only since the early 80's, thanks to the development of electronic and computers that the technique expands largely in numerous fields.
The main parameters that one can extract from Spectroscopic Ellipsometric measurements are optical index, absoroption coefficient and thickness.

Spectroscopic Ellipsometry Theory (english) (pdf , 400.8 Kb)
Spectroscopic Ellipsometry theory (French) (pdf , 968.66 Kb)

Adsorption analysis is a widely used for evaluation of porous materials. It is based on the adsorption/condensation of an appropriate adsorptive in the pores under the pressure below saturated vapor pressure. Amount of adsorbed/condensed vapor versus relative pressure of adsorptive at a constant temperature is called isotherm of adsorption. Porosity, Porous Size Distribution (PSD) are calculated from the isotherm of adsorption using Kelvin and Dubinin-Radushkevitch equations.

Ellipsometry Porosimetry Theory (pdf , 168.81 Kb)
Review paper on EP: Pore size distribution in thin films by ellipsometric porosimetry (pdf , 100.09 Kb)

The measurement of the specular reflectance of an x-ray beam at very grazing angle on a multiplayer structure is an extremely powerful tool to determine the individual thickness of the layers and the interface roughness. Combined with SE it allows th full characterisation of very thin films.

Grazing X-Ray Reflectance (pdf , 177.81 Kb)