Determination of the optical constants of ZnSe films by spectroscopic ellipsometry

Abstract

Spectroscopic ellipsometry was used to determine the real and imaginary parts of the dielectric function of ZnSe thin films grown on (001) GaAs substrates by molecular-beam epitaxy, for energies between 1.5 and 5.0 eV. A sum of harmonic oscillators is used to fit the dielectric function in order to determine the values of the threshold energies at the critical points. The fundamental energy gap was determined to be at 2.68 eV. The E0+Δ0 and E1 points were found to be equal to 3.126 and 4.75 eV, respectively. Below the fundamental absorption edge, a Sellmeir-type function was used to represent the refractive index. At the critical points, E0 and E0+Δ0, the fitting was improved by using an explicit function combining the contributions of these two points to the dielectric function.