Optical thickness and anisotropic orientation of a birefringent thin film: analysis from explicit expressions for reflection and transmission coefficients

Abstract

We present explicit expressions for the reflection and transmission coefficients of an anisotropic thin film. In the general case, the optical axis and the incident ray are in arbitrary directions. Multireflected ordinary rays and extraordinary rays in the thin film are coupled to each other at the interface. The degrees of polarization conversion for reflected and transmitted light from the anisotropic thin film are calculated. The transmittance and reflectance are measured by rotating the polarization of the normal incident ray, and the columnar growth plane and film thickness are thus determined. © 2006 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.

Influences of the Incident Angle, Orientation of Deposition Plane and Film Thickness on a Polarization Conversion Reflection Filter

“…Horowitz's model [4] showed that one of the principal axes is in the direction of columnar growth and the other two principal axes are perpendicular and parallel to the deposition plane respectively. When the principal axes of an anisotropic thin film are not coincident with the film surface coordinates, polarization conversion phenomenon has been proved in our study [5]. A new technique, polarization conversion reflectivity (PCR) technique, develops the angle-dependent and wavelength-dependent reflectance to novel optical devices.…”

“…An isotropic medium/anisotropic thin film/isotropic medium is shown in Fig. 1(b), the reflection coefficient [11] of polarization conversion with multi-reflection e-ray and o-ray coupling is represented as where the phase change in each reflected trip ( + Δ and − Δ ) is the ray (upward direction and downward direction) in Airy formula. Thin film interference supports a method to provide that advanced design to optimal optical constants with the high performance PCR.…”