Reflectance investigation on dielectric reflectors using ethanol, methanol and isopropanol as solvents in the synthesis process

Abstract

Dielectric reflectors are made up of a range of solvents in the wet chemical sol–gel based synthesis technique. The unexpected scarcity of solvents such as ethanol complicates matters, influencing the optical characteristics of the created multilayer structure. To eliminate the need for solvents, a new method for generating dielectric reflectors employing a variety of solvents must be created. We provide here an experimental inquiry on the synthesis and fabrication procedure of dielectric reflectors employing different solvents such as ethanol, methanol, and isopropanol that has not been reported previously to the best of our knowledge. The fabricated reflectors are characterized with AFM for roughness analysis and found 26, 5, and 1.2 nm for the solvent ethanol, methanol, and isopropanol respectively. Cross-sectional FE-SEM analysis supported the fabrication of titania and silica thin films with bright and dark colours on the dielectric reflectors. When ethanol was employed as the solvent, reflectance analysis using UV–vis spectroscopy approach showed 100 % reflectivity in the near-infrared region, and when methanol and isopropanol were used, improved reflectance as well as shift in the stop band were observed respectively.