Simultaneous Determination of Refractive Index and Thickness of Submicron Optical Polymer Films from Transmission Spectra.

High-transparency polymers, called optical polymers (OPs), are used in many thin-film devices, for which the knowledge of film thickness () and refractive index () is generally required. Spectrophotometry is a cost-effective, simple and fast non-destructive method often used to determine these parameters simultaneously, but its application is limited to films where > 500 nm. Here, a simple spectrophotometric method is reported to obtain simultaneously the and of a sub-micron OP film (down to values of a few tenths of a nm) from its transmission spectrum. The method is valid for any OP where the dispersion curve follows a two-coefficient Cauchy function and complies with a certain equation involving at two different wavelengths. Remarkably, such an equation is determined through the analysis of data for a wide set of commercial OPs, and its general validity is demonstrated. Films of various OPs (pristine or doped with fluorescent compounds), typically used in applications such as thin-film organic lasers, are prepared, and and are simultaneously determined with the proposed procedure. The success of the method is confirmed with variable-angle spectroscopic ellipsometry.