Ellipsometric investigations of plasmonic nanostructures and thin films

Abstract

In this work, plasmonic effects are utilized to answer both technical and fundamental questions regarding the properties of the composite materials. As a main spectroscopic method, Mueller matrix spectroscopic ellipsometry is used. The technique allows one to obtain a complete polarimetric response of the medium, reduced to 16 Mueller matrix elements. This, together with access to a wide range of incident angles, offers a rich set of parameters for the exact recovery of the optical properties of the medium. The studies have been conducted on two types of samples, artificial plasmonic crystals, produced by lithographic methods and on VO2 thin films supporting insulator-metal transition at elevated temperatures, with localized plasmonic states in the intermediate regime.