Influence of various underlayers on the surface roughness of evaporated silver films

Statistical characterization of thermally evaporated roughCaF2films

“…Rough calcium fluoride has been used extensively as a substrate to create rough metallic surfaces that have been studied using surface plasmon techniques [1][2][3][4][5]. Several of those studies have investigated how the roughness of the metallic surface changes with different thicknesses of CaF 2 [3,4,6].…”

“…Several of those studies have investigated how the roughness of the metallic surface changes with different thicknesses of CaF 2 [3,4,6]. Other authors have measured surface roughness as a function of CaF 2 thickness for both metallic coated and uncoated CaF 2 surfaces using a replication technique followed by a microdensitometer analysis of the impression [7,8].…”

“…One purpose of the present work is to characterize deposited CaF 2 films on glass as a function of coverage using atomic force microscopy (AFM) and profilometer measurements. We are not interested in the optical properties of metals deposited on these surfaces, but rather our interest is in using the surfaces themselves as an adsorption substrate for 4 He thin films. This makes the roughness characteristics of the surfaces produced of direct interest.…”

“…The first set, referred to as I, contains substrates made solely for the purpose of surface analysis. The second set (II) is comprised of samples that were used for a 4 He thin film adsorption study after which the surface structure of the substrates was examined. A separate report will provide the details of the low temperature experiments studying 4 He adsorption and sound modes of the adsorbed 4 He films [9].…”

Interplay of CaF2

“…The intensity and angular distribution of the radiation is known from a large number of studies to reflect the nature of the surface roughness [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] . It is well established in general that roughness features act as dipoles and give rise to radiation polarized with the electric field vector in the plane of emission [2] though there have been difficulties in reproducibility of detail and consequent discrepancies in interpretation .…”