Optical properties of phase shift on reflection and/or transmission through biaxial anisotropic thin films

Abstract

On the basis of theoretical analysis of biaxial birefringent thin films, this study investigates the optical properties of phase shift on reflection and/or transmission through slanted columnar TiO₂ sculptured anisotropic thin film (ATF) deposited with glancing angle deposition (GLAD) technique via reactive electron-beam evaporation. The tilted nanocolumn microstructures of thin film induce the optical anisotropy. The optical constants dispersion equations of TiO₂ ATF are determined from fitting the transmittance spectra for s- and p-polarized waves measured at normal and oblique incidence within 400-1200nm. With the extracted structure parameters, the phase shifts of polarized light are analyzed with the characteristic matrix and then measured with spectroscopic ellipsometry in the deposition plane. A reasonably good agreement between the theoretical studies and experimental measurements is obtained. In addition, the dependence of the phase shift on oblique incidence angle is also discussed. The results show a greater generality and superiority of the characteristic matrix method. Birefringence of the biaxial ATF performed a sophisticated phase modulation with varied incidence angles over a broad range to have a wide-angle phase shift.