Characterization of optical thin films exhibiting defects

In this paper the mathematical formalism enabling us to include defects of thin films into the formulae expressing their optical quantities is presented. The attention is devoted to the defects consisting in boundary roughness and inhomogeneity corresponding to the refractive index profile. This mathematical formalism is based on 2x2 matrix algebra. The Rayleigh-Rice theory (RRT) is used for describing boundary roughness. The refractive index profile is included into the matrix formalism by means a special procedure based on combination of the Drude and Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin-Jeffries (WKBJ) approximations. The mathematical formalism is applied for the optical characterization of thin films of TiO2 and As-S chalcogenides. Using this formalism the experimental data corresponding to the ellipsometric quantities, reflectance measured from the ambient side, reflectance measured from the substrate side and transmittance are treated. The corrections of the systematic errors connected with the reflection accessory of the spectrometer used is carried out using the special procedure.

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