Determination of optical dispersion and film thickness of semiconducting disordered layers by transmission measurements: Application for chemically vapor deposited Si and SnO2 film

A method is presented for the determination of the optical dispersion and thickness of thin semiconducting disordered layers, or stacks of such layers, deposited on fully or partly transparent substrates using transmission measurements. The method consists in fitting to the experimentally recorded spectra, theoretical ones, generated simulating the optical dispersion of the films involved with the help of the physical model proposed by Forouhi and Bloomer for amorphous semiconductors [Phys. Rev. B 34, 7018 (1986)]. The fit is made using standard regression analysis techniques that allow determination of the model parameters corresponding to these films. This method is applied for amorphous Si layers deposited on fused silica substrates by low pressure chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and SnO2 films grown by atmospheric pressure CVD on glass substrates and give results that are in agreement with those reported in the literature.