Calculation of dispersion of surface and interface phonon polariton resonances in wurtzite semiconductor multilayer system taking damping effects into account

•Effects of damping on surface and interface phonon polaritons (SPP and IPP)•SPP and IPP resonances in wurtzite semiconductor multilayer system•Calculation of dispersion of SPP and IPP modes without zero damping constraint•Shows up the leaky modes•Indication of the strength of the various modes

We studied the dispersion of the surface phonon polariton (SPP) and interface phonon polariton (IPP) resonances in wurtzite semiconductor multilayer system taking the damping parameters into account. Instead of using the conventional implicit surface polariton dispersion relation, a formulation that makes use of the reflection coefficient of the evanescent waves above the sample is employed to obtain the dispersion of the SPP and IPP resonances. As a demonstration, simulated results of a simple three-layer system, namely, vacuum/ZnO/6H-SiC, are given. The results are discussed and compared with those generated by the conventional implicit formulation. It is shown that the present formulation allows the prediction of the SPP and IPP resonant frequencies without the zero damping constraint and is also able to model the dispersion of leaky surface modes. The effects of damping parameters on the dispersion of the various modes can be visualized analytically without numerical instabilities, thus minimizing the computational efforts and improving the reliability of the theoretical predictions. The results are confirmed with polarized infrared attenuated total reflection spectroscopy.