Published in

MDPI, Polymers, 15(13), p. 2545, 2021

DOI: 10.3390/polym13152545

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Simultaneous Determination of Refractive Index and Thickness of Submicron Optical Polymer Films from Transmission Spectra

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

High-transparency polymers, called optical polymers (OPs), are used in many thin-film devices, for which the knowledge of film thickness (h) and refractive index (n) is generally required. Spectrophotometry is a cost-effective, simple and fast non-destructive method often used to determine these parameters simultaneously, but its application is limited to films where h > 500 nm. Here, a simple spectrophotometric method is reported to obtain simultaneously the n and h of a sub-micron OP film (down to values of a few tenths of a nm) from its transmission spectrum. The method is valid for any OP where the n dispersion curve follows a two-coefficient Cauchy function and complies with a certain equation involving n at two different wavelengths. Remarkably, such an equation is determined through the analysis of n data for a wide set of commercial OPs, and its general validity is demonstrated. Films of various OPs (pristine or doped with fluorescent compounds), typically used in applications such as thin-film organic lasers, are prepared, and n and h are simultaneously determined with the proposed procedure. The success of the method is confirmed with variable-angle spectroscopic ellipsometry.