Abstract

Because of the small penetration depth of the electromagnetic field, the deposition of a thin surface layer may lead to large errors in the measurement of the dielectric properties of highly reflective materials (e.g., metals). It is shown that unless experimental conditions are chosen carefully, it is not possible to distinguish unambiguously between the effect of an ultrathin surface layer and that of a change in the dielectric function of the material when probing the latter by surface-plasmon excitation.

© 1988 Optical Society of America

Extreme attenuation of total internal reflection used for determination of optical properties of metals

Mette Owner-Petersen, Bo-Shen Zhu, and Erik Dalsgaard
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 4(9) 1741-1747 (1987)

Characterization of dielectric-coated, metal mirrors using surface plasmon spectroscopy

Eduardo Fontana, R. H. Pantell, and M. Moslehi
Appl. Opt. 27(16) 3334-3340 (1988)

Incidence angles for optimized ATR excitation of surface plasmons

Eric F. Y. Kou and Theodor Tamir
Appl. Opt. 27(19) 4098-4103 (1988)

Measuring optical constants of ultrathin layers using surface-plasmon-resonance-based imaging ellipsometry

Yao Shan, Guohang Hu, Liyuan Gu, Hongbo He, Aijun Zeng, Yuanan Zhao, and Anna Sytchkova
Appl. Opt. 56(28) 7898-7904 (2017)

Determination of dielectric permittivity and thickness of a metal layer from a surface plasmon resonance experiment

Helene E. de Bruijn, Rob P. H. Kooyman, and Jan Greve
Appl. Opt. 29(13) 1974-1978 (1990)