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Thin films covering large surfaces are used in a very wide range of applications from displays through corrosion resistance, decoration, water proofing, smart windows, adhesion performance to solar panels, and many more. Scaling up existing thin‐film measurement techniques requires a high speed and the redesign of the configurations. The aim of this review is to give an overview of recent and past activities in the area, as well as an outlook of future opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding interface processes has been gaining crucial importance in many applications of biology, chemistry, and physics. The boundaries of those disciplines had been quickly vanishing in the last decade, as metrologies and the knowledge gained based on their use improved and increased rapidly. Optical techniques such as microscopy, waveguide sensing, or ellipsometry are significant and widely used means of studying solid‐liquid interfaces because the applicability of ions, electrons, or X‐ray radiation is strongly limited for this purpose due to the high absorption in aqueous ambient. Light does not only provide access to the interface making the measurement possible, but utilizing the phase information and the large amount of spectroscopic data, the ellipsometric characterization is also highly sensitive and robust. This article focuses on ellipsometry of biomaterials in the visible wavelength range. The authors discuss the main challenges of measuring thickness and optical properties of ultra‐thin films such as biomolecules. The authors give an overview on different kinds of flow cells from conventional through internal reflection to combined methods. They emphasize that surface nanostructures and evaluation strategies are also crucial parts of in situ bioellipsometry and summarize some of the recent trends showing examples mainly from their research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To characterize zirconium surfaces in forms of tubes and plates for nuclear applications, ellipsometry has been used. It has been shown earlier that ellipsometry can be used even on the surface of tubes with a diameter of 9.1 mm, when applying proper focusing. Reference refractive indices have also been determined for both zirconium and zirconium oxide, and demonstrated the capability of ellipsometry for the determination of the thickness and refractive index of the surface oxide applying different oxidation parameters. In this study, processed zirconium surfaces using the technique developed in author's previous work is characterized. Both ultra violet‐visible‐near infrared and mid‐infrared ellipsometry to study the thicknesses of the surface layers as well as the dielectric functions of both the layers and the substrate are used. A heat cell that allows multiple angle of incidence ellipsometry measurement at elevated temperatures is also developed. This setup is used to monitor the temporal behavior of hydrogenated and oxidized zirconium surfaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]