DETERMINATION OF REFRACTIVE-INDEXES AND THICKNESS OF ABSORBING CRYSTALLINE THIN-FILMS BY USING PRISM COUPLER

An improved method has been implemented to study the reflection of optical plane waves from anisotropic and absorbing films. The reflection from anisotropic nonabsorbing films and from isotropic nonabsorbing films can be shown as some special cases. The method in this paper can be applied to almost all kinds of materials involved in optical films and integrated optics studies. Guided waves in the anisotropic and absorbing waveguides are determined, and the prism coupler method is employed to determine refractive indices and thickness of the anisotropic and absorbing films. The results show that when we only couple light beams into films with small effective indices, the effect of the absorption can be neglected.