Reflection electron energy loss spectroscopy as efficient technique for the determination of optical properties of polystyrene intermixed with gold nanoparticles

It is worth noting that no data are available on the optical properties of metalized polymers such as gold nanoparticles intermixed with polystyrene. Therefore, this work is of high importance in terms of both the sample studied here and the method applied. The advantage of the method applied here is that no information on the lateral distribution of the nanocomposite sample is required. This means that the REELS technique has been presented here to suitably, efficiently and easily obtain the optical properties of such nano-metalized polymer in which the metal nanoparticles have been vertically well distributed (homogeneous in depth). Therefore, for vertically homogeneous and laterally inhomogeneous samples, it is possible to make REELS imaging by scanning the sample and thus to make an image of their optical properties.