Macroscopic exploration and visual quality inspection of thin film deposit Simon-Frédéric Désage 1 , Gilles Pitard 1 , Hugues Favrelière 1 , Maurice Pillet 1 , Olivier Dellea 2 , Pascal Fugier 2 , Philippe Coronel 2 , Emmanuel Ollier 2 1 SYMME, Laboratoire des Systèmes et Matériaux pour la Mécatronique, Université de Savoie, Annecy, France {simon-frederic.desage, gilles.pitard, maurice.pillet, hugues.favreliere}@univ-savoie.fr 2 L2CE CEA/Liten, Laboratoire des Composants pour la Conversion de l‘Energie, Commissariat à l‘Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives / Laboratoire d'Innovation pour les Technologies des Energies Nouvelles et les nanomatériaux, Grenoble, France {olivier.dellea, pascal.fugier, philippe.coronel, emmanuel.ollier}@cea.fr ABSTRACT Micro/nanotechnologies evolve causing an evolution of surface characterization systems of thin films. Today, these systems are not adapted to the future needs (or current) to characterize and qualify a large effective area within industrial production. This concerns the thin film active layers or simple mask for structuring the surface. This paper proposes a quality control method for thin films of self-assembled particles and high quality. This method is founded on the intersection of several skills available in our laboratories: Industrial process of visual inspection, optical methods for quality control (large area relative to the state of the art) and advances in micro/nanotechnology (CEA/Liten). Keywords: Surface metrology; Quality Inspection; Micro/nanotechnologies; thin films; Colloidal lithography; BooStream; Computer Vision; Monolayer colloidal crystals, 2D inverse opals 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Interest of thin films Nowadays, thin films are used in many fields such as mechanics [1], sensors, photonics, surface wetting [2], biological and chemical sensing. This is why it‘s interesting to perform a large variety of patterned deposits. It is also interesting to use an easy, efficient, flexible and inexpensive fabrication technique such as colloidal lithography [3]. It enables the creation of micro- nanostructures with a high degree of control and reproducibility [4]. The physical processes were investigated such as activation of surface particles, solvents, surface pressure aiming at controlling or ordering the self- assembly of particles. Very few of these studies seek to inspect and qualify the particles ordering once deposited on the substrate. Figure 1: Hexagonal-close-packed (HCP) monolayer of silica microspheres Ø1.1ȝm. Figure 2: Color response of an HCP monolayer of silica microbeads Ø1.1ȝm on diamond like carbon substrate 2x2cm².