Vol. 31, Issue 4, pp. 739-749 (2001)

Abstract

Several optical properties and optical constants of a thin Ag-SiO bilayer of 110 AA, 60 AA - Ag and 50 AA - SiO were calculated. This bilayer constituted the identity period of several ultrathin Ag-SiO superlattice stacks studied earlier. The calculations included the effective optical constants, the skin depth, the absorption coefficients and the optical conductivity of the bilayer unit. The calculations have relied on previous measurements of the basic optical properties of the individual Ag and SiO thin layers. The original measurements that included the reflectivity, transmissivity, and absorptivity of those layers in the UV and visible regions were carried out by the near normal incidence method. All studied samples relevant to this work, the single thin layers and superlattices, had originally been deposited on quartz substrates and prepared in a vacuum of ~ 10^-6 torr. Analysis of the present results revealed interesting features of an Ag-SiO bilayer that was incorporated in the fabrication of ultrathin Ag-SiO superlattices of whose optical properties were measured and documented in a previous communication.