Hello I have recently come across this community for thin film analysis using EPMA and am wondering if the following situation is calculable using BadgerFilm:
- estimating the thickness of an SiO2 layer (ranging from 30nm - 500nm) formed on an SiC substrate using EDS
If you only need to know the thickness and not the composition of the film, you might be better off just doing a cross section and seeing the thickness in SE. Another method would be critical angle x-ray reflection.
I have done a number of MVA EPMA measurements where the both the substrate and the film in question share a major element and it is possible to get a convincing result but one must constrain either the composition or the thickness. But it depends greatly on the physics details and the accelerating voltages selected. In these situations I've always only needed to determine the compositions, so we measured thickness using x-ray reflectivity and constrained that in the MVA models to obtain compositions.
Since it appears that you already know compositions for both your substrate and deposited film, you would declare the substrate and thin film composition as fixed and leave the film thickness as unknown. It should be able to converge.
I know STRATAGem can often handle this situation, so BadgerFilm should be able to also.