TFStudio 1.7.0

Do you use an ellipsometer? This release imports measured Ψ and Δ, and I want it to read your instrument's files exactly as exported. Share a sample file in issue #66 and the format gets supported.

Changelog

v1.7.0

Added

• Layer Thicknesses: a new analysis window that draws every layer as a bar in its material's color, with the thickness axis in nm, optical thickness, QWOT or FWOT.
• Tear-off windows: drag a window's tab anywhere that is not a docking target and it becomes its own window you can put on a second monitor Drag it back over the layout to dock it, or use the dock button on its title bar.
• Monitor Worksheet: a new window that says whether the design can be terminated on an optical monitor. It divides the run across witness chips, picks a monitoring wavelength for each, and flags the layers that cannot be stopped closely enough.
• n,k Characterization: a new window that derives a film's index, extinction and thickness from a measured transmittance and reflectance, or from an ellipsometric Ψ and Δ pair. It says how far the model is from the measurement, and names the conditions under which a small residual is still describing the wrong film; the result saves as a material, or as a design that reproduces the measurement it was fitted to.
• Measured Spectra: fit a design to an imported measured curve. The fit becomes one row in the merit function, and you choose whether it uses the measured points as they are, every Nth of them, or an even wavelength step.
• Measured Spectra: a curve records the angle of incidence, polarization and side it was measured at, and the fit refuses a curve measured on the side the design is not evaluated on.
• Measured Spectra: measured curves export in nanometres, micrometres or wavenumber, as a fraction or a percentage, and you pick which curves go in the file.
• Measured Ellipsometry: a new window that imports a measured Ψ and Δ pair from a spectroscopic ellipsometer, including a file whose axis is photon energy in eV and one that repeats its wavelengths for several angles of incidence. The pair is drawn over the calculated curves on the ellipsometry plot, and measured or calculated Ψ/Δ export as CSV.
• A splash screen while the app starts, showing the version.

Changed

• Mono Simulator: the monitor signal now reads through the whole witness chip, bare back face included, and the chip's glass can be set separately from the design substrate.
• BBM Simulator: the same witness-chip signal and chip glass choice as the Mono Simulator.
• Measured Spectra: rebuilt to match the analysis windows. The preview is a real chart of the measurement against the design, and an imported curve can be renamed, recoloured, retyped, rescaled and trimmed without importing it again.
• Optical Evaluation: the plot dims the wavelengths that fall outside a material's data range, with the material named in the band. The out-of-range warning gains a button that sets the range to where every material has data.
• The ribbon is now five tabs: Setup, Analysis, Optimization, Production and Help. The tolerance and needle tools are laid out on the tab instead of hidden in a dropdown, and double-clicking the open tab collapses the ribbon.
• A search box on the tab strip finds a tool by name from any tab and opens it.
• The menu bar is gone. New, Open, Save, Undo and Redo are on the Setup tab and repeated in the title bar; the welcome tour, tutorials, documentation, About and the update check are on the Help tab; layouts and fullscreen are under the logo.
• Settings is now a Preferences button on the Setup tab, and the dialog is rebuilt: each setting is one row with its control beside it, instead of a stack that left most of the window empty.
• Preferences gained a Quick Access page: choose which tools sit in the title bar and in what order. The list is kept with the other preferences, so a reinstall does not take it with it.
• Dropping a window's tab on the docking compass shows where it will land before you let go.
• The portable build starts much faster.

Fixed

• Ctrl+O opens a design file. It was listed as a shortcut but did nothing, as were Ctrl+N, Ctrl+, and Ctrl+1.
• The readout lists every curve at the wavelength under the pointer. A measured curve is on the instrument's wavelength step, so between the design's samples the readout showed the measurement alone, and on them the design alone.
• The app no longer opens in the light theme for a moment before switching to yours, and the window edge no longer flashes white while being resized.
• Preferences and the Design Editor tool dialogs no longer close when you click beside them.
• Merit Function Editor: the Add and Delete buttons above the operand table are translated.
• Mono Simulator: a thin layer cut on a level no longer converges to a slightly wrong thickness even with a perfect monitor.
• Measured Spectra: a column headed R% is read as reflectance, and the import now says how many rows in the file held no value.
• Measured Spectra: PerkinElmer ASCII exports no longer read their own header settings as the start of the spectrum.
• Measured Spectra: files that tag every data row, and headers split into a name row and a unit row, import correctly instead of being rejected or misnamed.
• Wavelength plots keep a readable grid whatever they span. An axis reading far outside the usual few hundred nanometres lost its labels entirely, and the Integral Values overlay drew a gridline every 50 nm however wide the range.
• Ellipsometry Evaluation: hiding Ψ left the plot with no grid lines at all. The grid now follows whichever curve is on screen.
• Ellipsometry Evaluation: the second Δ convention was labelled "Woollam", which is not what a Woollam instrument writes. It is now "360° − Δ", and both options say what they are for. The default is unchanged and still matches measurement files.
• Design Editor: the layer right-click menu and the drag handle are translated.
• Whole-sample spectra are now fast at every angle of incidence, not only at normal.
• Ellipsometry Evaluation redraws several times faster, in both the wavelength sweep and the angle sweep.
• The portable build keeps your preferences, window layout and theme between runs, and no longer shows the welcome screen at every launch.