Surface phonon polariton characteristics of wurtzite ZnO thin film grown on silicon substrate

Abstract

In this work, p-polarized far infrared attenuated total reflection (ATR) with Otto configuration technique is employed to study the surface phonon polariton (SPP) characteristics of wurtzite ZnO thin film grown on Si(111) substrate. One prominent dip corresponding to the leaky SPP mode of the ZnO is detected at 532 cm À1. The obtained result is in good agreement with the calculated ATR spectrum simulated based on the transfer matrix formulation. The origin of the observed dip is verified with the surface polariton dispersion curves based on a three anisotropic layer model (air-ZnO-Si). The results also reveal that the real SPP and the interface phonon polariton modes for this studied structure are barely observable experimentally.