Determination of optical parameters of organic and inorganic thin films using both surface plasmon resonance and Abelès-Brewster methods

We present two methods to characterize organic and inorganic thin films. The thin films characterization was performed employing an opto-mechanical system, which uses light with p polarization from a He-Ne laser operating at 632.8 nm. This system is based on the methods of Abelès-Brewster and surface plasmon resonance in the prism-based Kretschmann configuration. The metallic thin films characterization is made using surface plasmon resonance method while dielectric thin films (organic and inorganic) are characterized using both methods The optical parameters were obtained through a LabVIEW program based on the Fresnel equations by matrix method. The proposed system was proved through the optical characterization of gold, zinc sulfide and bovine serum albumin thin films with a fast, simple and accurate response and the optical parameters were obtained for each tested film. The refractive index and extinction coefficient values obtained for the gold thin film were 0.1758 and 3.3895, respectively, with a thickness of 53 nm; a refractive index of 2.3501 was measured for the zinc sulfide thin film showing a thicknesses of 28.42 nm; meanwhile bovine serum albumin presented a refractive index of 1.5595 with a thickness of 143.75 nm.