Measurement of thicknesses and optical properties of thin films from Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR)

The inverse problem for thin film properties is a challenge for nanotechnology engineering. We propose the application of a simple and intuitive numerical scheme: a basic particle swarm optimization (PSO) method, to solve the inverse problem from surface plasmon resonance (SPR) experimental results. The purpose is to retrieve unknown parameters from the measurement of the fall in reflectivity due to the excitation of a surface plasmon polariton at a metal/dielectric interface. In this case, the PSO results reveal the possibility of fully exploring the measurement results of experimental angular exploration of the reflectivity by multilayers.