Analysis and Modelling of the Infrared Reflectivity from Thin Films

M. Shamseddinea*, M. Kazanb,and M. Tabbalc Department of physics, American University of Beirut, Lebanon a mos05@aub.edu.lb, bmk140@aub.edu.lb, cmt03@aub.edu.lb, *M. Shamseddine Optical and electrical properties of semiconductor materials related to the recent technological advancements that are playing a vital role in the integratedcircuit manufacturing, optoelectronics, and countless industrial applications are often critical to the functionality and performance of many devices. The combination of scientific interest and technological impact calls for optical characterization methods as valuable in characterizing optical properties. Among the optical characterization techniques, Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) Reflectivity is the most quantitative one because simple theories can be used to analyze the response of semiconductors to these infrared wavelengths. In addition, FTIR is sensitive to even important intrinsic and extrinsic semiconductor properties such as: lattice vibrations and phonon features, impurities behavior and defects concentration, band characteristics, thickness, free carriers transport as well as the topology and interfaces conditions in microstructures on a layer-by-layer basis. Therefore, good quality thin films grown by a typical PLD high vacuum system have been analyzed by FTIR Reflectivity. The reflectivity spectra of different samples have been analyzed by a model that takes into account the contribution of the interface asperities as well as the material anisotropy, and considers layer-by-layer interface using the frequency dependent infrared dielectric function as given by the damped Lorentz oscillator model (DLOM) [1], describing the lattice and plasmon vibration contributions to the overall complex dielectric function. So far, the model dielectric functions reported in the literature were deduced either parallel or perpendicular to the plane of incidence. The key development in our model is that the crystal anisotropy as well as the interface conditions have been taken into account. The infrared total response is considered as being the combination of individual components of the reflected electric field and a superposition of the diffusively and specularly reflected waves. The damping constant and stresses at the interface are set as a free adjustable parameters. The excellent agreement between our modeling and the experimental data demonstrated that the proposed model is a viable tool for the characterization of thin films. Its a fast non-destructive tool that bring very relevant information concerning key parameters for technological applications namely, optical parameters, mobility, doping level, thickness of the film, crystallographic orientations and stresses at interfaces. All these results make this model expensive for the semiconductor industry.
[1] Perkowitz, S., 1993. Optical Characterization of Semiconductors (Emory University, Atlanta, USA)