The International Conference on Spectroscopic Ellipsometry (ICSE) series was founded in 1993 and is held approximately every three years to share new ideas related to ellipsometric and optical characterization applications, such as materials characterization, real-time process analysis and control, and instrumentation development that takes advantage of the polarization properties of electromagnetic radiation in the spectral region from terahertz to soft-x-ray wavelengths. ICSE meetings bring together an international cohort of experienced scientists and community leaders, as well as postdoctoral research associates, other early-career professionals, and graduate or undergraduate students.
At the ICSE-10 in 2025, the organizers and attendees looked back with appreciation not only at how far the field has come, but also at how far science and technology have evolved.
The present ICSE series follows three symposia/conferences on ellipsometry, without the adjective “spectroscopic”. These meetings were held at the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST) in Washington, DC, in 1963, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1968, and in Paris in 1983. The foreword of the 1963 proceedings noted that “an important responsibility of the NBS is the development and improvement of measurement techniques and the dissemination of information about them.”
All three precursor proceedings make for interesting reading still today, not only because the absence of spectroscopy severely limited application possibilities, but also because the first two proceedings include audience questions and comments. In the first two symposia, much time was spent interpreting the Fresnel equations and studying time-dependent processes, such as oxidation and annealing. Difficulties in accurately determining the null condition for null ellipsometers precluded efforts at spectroscopy. Only the 546.1 nm wavelength of the mercury green line was largely understood. However, by the time of the 1983 Paris conference, this had begun to change. A decade later, by the 1993 Paris conference, spectroscopic ellipsometry had already been well established.
Please find a link collection of past conference/symposium proceedings here!
