Determination of layer thickness and optical constants of thin films by using a modified pattern search method.

We propose the use of a pattern search optimization technique in combination with a seed preprocessing procedure to determine the optical constants and thickness of thin films using only the transmittance spectra. The approach is quite flexible, straightforward to implement, and efficient in reaching the best fitting. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the method in extracting optical constants, even when the films are not displaying interference fringes. Comparison to a real-coded genetic algorithm shows that the modified pattern search is fast, almost accurate, and does not need any parameter adjustments. The approach is successfully applied to extract the thickness and optical constants of spray pyrolyzed nanocrystalline CdO thin films.