Magneto-Optic and Ellipsometric study of nanostructured media

提出的研究是关于由铁磁材料组成的纳米管和棒的结构阵列的制造。这些将通过最近开发的技术来制备，使用由阳极氧化产生的圆柱形孔填充，溅射沉积的薄铝膜。制造技术在贝尔法斯特得到了长足的发展，并产生了具有令人兴奋的新光学特性的介质。利用变角度、椭偏光谱、反射率和透射率光度法研究了阵列的各向异性光学特性。我们的目标是尝试用它们的基本复介电常数张量来描述光学性质。磁特性将根据其磁滞行为进行检查，随后将对其磁光效应进行全面检查。特别是，我们将翻新现有的克尔偏振计，使其能够全自动收集复杂的克尔（反射）和法拉第（透射）效应。这将使我们能够评估该介质在适当应用方面的潜力，并提供有关磁光参数的基本数据。将尝试根据复杂的Voigt参数及其在宽光谱范围内随波长的变化来表征材料。希望阵列设计参数能够以某种方式控制其光学特性，使其适合磁光增强以产生超大克尔效应，这可能会导致光学隔离器设备的改进和超快速磁光开关阵列的生产，用于未来影院和其他公共显示器中使用的3D/HD显示器。该项目成功的基础将是纳米结构的光学和磁光特性的理论建模及其在平面阵列中的组装。利用修正的有效介质理论，特别考虑到介质的各向异性性质，在这方面取得了重大进展。这些有效介质理论将被扩展到考虑结构的磁性组分/s的磁光活性，并希望我们将在解释可观察到的线性，一阶，磁光效应方面取得类似的成功。此外，我们还将利用商业（Comsol）多物理场建模和仿真包，用于基于有限元分析的光学特性建模，并且已经证明非常有用。这是否可以扩展到处理磁光性质还有待观察。

The proposed research is concerned with the fabrication of structured arrays of nanoscale tubes and rods composed of ferromagnetic materials. These will be prepared by recently developed techniques using the in-filling of cylindrical pores created by the anodisation of thin, sputter-deposited aluminium films. The manufacturing technique has been developed considerably in Belfast and given rise to media with exciting new optical properties. The anisotropic optical properties of the arrays will be investigated using variable angle, spectroscopic ellipsometry and reflectance and transmittance photometry. The objective will be to attempt to characterise the optical properties in terms of their fundamental complex permittivity tensor. The magnetic properties will be examined in terms of their hysteresis behaviour and this will be followed by a comprehensive examination of their magneto-optical effects. In particular we will refurbish an existing Kerr polarimeter to enable fully automatic collection of both complex Kerr (reflection) and Faraday (transmission) effects. This will enable us to assess the potential of the media for suitable applications and provide basic data on the magneto-optic parameters. An attempt will be made to characterise the materials in terms of the complex Voigt parameter and its variation with wavelength over a wide spectral range. It is hoped that the array design parameters will give control over their optical properties in a way that may make them suitable for magneto-optic enhancement to generate extra-large Kerr effects that may lead to improved devices for optical isolators and for the production of arrays of ultra-fast magneto-optic switches for future 3D/HD displays of the type used in cinemas and other public displays.Fundamental to the success of this project will be the accompanying theoretical modelling of the optical and magneto-optical properties of the nanostructures and their assembly in planar arrays. Significant progress has been made in this regard using modified effective medium theories specifically adapted to take into consideration the anisotropic nature of the medium. These effective medium theories will be extended to take into account the magneto-optical activity of the magnetic component/s of the structures and it is hoped that we will have similar success in explaining the observable linear, first-order, magneto-optical effects. In addition, we will also make use of a commercial (Comsol) Multiphysics Modelling and simulation package for modelling optical properties that is based upon finite element analysis and which has already proved very useful. It remains to be seen if this can be extended to deal with magneto-optical properties.