Multilevel effective material approximation for modeling ellipsometric measurements on complex porous thin films

Catalysts are important components in chemical processes because they lower the activation energy and thus determine the rate, efficiency and selectivity of a chemical reaction. This property plays an important role in many of today's processes, including the electrochemical splitting of water. Due to the continuous development of catalyst materials, they are becoming more complex, which makes a reliable evaluation of physicochemical properties challenging even for modern analytical measurement techniques and industrial manufacturing. We present a fast, vacuum-free and non-destructive analytical approach using multi-sample spectroscopic ellipsometry to determine relevant material parameters such as film thickness, porosity and composition of mesoporous IrOx-TiOy films. Mesoporous IrOx-TiOy films were deposited on Si wafers by sol- gel synthesis, varying the composition of the mixed oxide films between 0 and 100 wt%(Ir). The ellipsometric modeling is based on an anisotropic Bruggeman effective medium approximation (a-BEMA) to determine the film thickness and volume fraction of the material and pores. The volume fraction of the material was again modeled using a Bruggeman EMA to determine the chemical composition of the materials. The ellipsometric fitting results were compared with complementary methods, such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM), electron probe microanalysis (EPMA) as well as environmental ellipsometric porosimetry (EEP).

Automated summary

Catalysts are crucial in chemical processes as they impact the rate, efficiency, and selectivity of reactions by lowering the activation energy. However, the complexity of catalyst materials makes it challenging to evaluate their physicochemical properties accurately. In this study, a vacuum-free and non-destructive analytical approach using multi-sample spectroscopic ellipsometry was introduced to determine important material parameters of mesoporous catalyst films.