Accurate Determination of the Uniaxial Complex Refractive Index and the Optical Band Gap of Polymer Thin Films to Correlate their Absorption Strength and Onset of Absorption.

Abstract

The advanced development of optoelectronic devices requires a methodical knowledge of the fundamental material properties of the key active components. Systematic investigations and correlations of such basic optical properties can lead to new insights for the design of more potent materials. In this perspective, we provide a systematic overview of the uniaxial complex refractive indices and the absorption coefficients obtained by ellipsometry as well as the optical bandgap energies derived from Tauc plots of six selected solution-processed polymer thin films. While the optical bandgap energies are intentionally distributed over the visible spectral range, we found that the absorption strength of all polymer samples are grouped in a random distribution within a rather uniform range of values.