Optical properties of ultrathin copper thin films sandwiched between Nb-doped TiO₂ films studied with spectroscopic ellipsometry

Cu thin films sandwiched between Nb-doped TiO₂ (NTO) thin films were grown on glass substrates using tilted-dual target DC magnetron sputtering deposition. The thicknesses of the top and bottom NTOs were nominally 30 nm, and the thicknesses of the Cu films (t) varied between 1.5nm and 50 nm. We measured the ellipsometric angles (Φ Δ) of the NTO/Cu/NTO/glass by using spectroscopic ellipsometry and estimated the thicknesses and dielectric functions of the Cu films by using a multi-layer model analysis. Transmission electron microscopy measurements showed that the Cu layers evolved from aggregates of Cu nanoparticles to coalesced Cu thin films as the Cu film thickness increased. Sheet resistance data also showed that the t = 8 nm film was near the percolation threshold, suggesting that films thinner than 8 nm were aggregations of Cu nanoparticles that were not well-connected. The films thicker than 8 nm were above the percolation threshold. From the Drude model, we estimated the plasmon frequency (ω_p) and the electron relaxation time (τ), which were found to increase with increasing film thickness. By applying standard critical point analysis to the second derivatives of the dielectric function spectra, we found several peaks near 1.5, 2.1, 2.5, 3.5, and 4.3 eV, and attributed to interband transitions. The peak energies (except 1.5eV) matched to the band structure calculations of bulkCu found in the literature.