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A History of Early Ellipsometry and Polarimetry

Thursday, October 31, 2013, 11:20 am, Room 101 A

This work surveys the early history of polarimetry and ellipsometry. Special consideration is given to the time period between Drude’s original work in the late 1880’s and the work of Rothen in the mid 1940’s.

Snell determined the refractive index of water in 1621. Isaac Newton followed in the 1660’s with the prism minimum deviation technique. In the late 1880’s August Kundt measured the optical properties of very thin metal films by minimum deviation, but a better technique was needed for absorbing materials.

The polarimeter was invented around 1840. Early polarimetry was used to measure the rotation of polarized light through solutions of sugar, and used in customs offices at seaports for taxation of sugar shipments. In 1845 the Faraday effect showed rotation of polarization by a magnetic field, a result later explained by James Clerk Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory.

Paul Drude applied Maxwell’s theory to describe the internal structure of materials. To experimentally determine optical properties Drude developed ellipsometry as an analytical technique between 1885 and 1890. Null ellipsometry techniques were originally used, but in the following decades half-shade techniques with improved accuracy became common.

Ellipsometry remained a popular technique after the time of Drude. A surprising amount of this early ellipsometry work was spectroscopic. By 1910 R.S. Minor, A.Q. Tool, and L.R. Ingersoll used ellipsometry to determine the optical constants of metals over a wide spectral range from 226 nm in the ultraviolet to 2250 nm in the infrared.