Fabrication and ellipsometric investigation of thin films of rare-earth oxides

Multiple-angle-of-incidence reflectance ellipsometric measurements at lambda=632.8 nm have been applied to study the optical parameters and thicknesses of rare-earth oxides of cerium (CeO2), europium (EuO), double systems of Gd2O3/EuO which were fabricated by technology of flash evaporation in vacuum from powder original materials. The computation of layers thicknesses and their optical constants by the solution of the inverse ellipsometric problem, using the modified method of general search and special choice of fitting function has been carried out. The thickness dependencies of optical parameters of CeO2 layers have been investigated. The feature of codeposition of different materials (Gd2O3 and EuO) to form mixed optical materials of variable composition was used to determine the variation of refractive index with concentration (volume percentage) of Gd2O3 for Gd2O3/EuO co-deposited homogeneous films.