H. Xu, B. Da, J. Tóth, K. Tokési, Z.J. Ding

Physical Review B 95 (2017) Paper: 195417

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.95.195417

Published: 16 May 2017

Abstract

We present an absolute extraction method of optical constants of metal from the measured reflection electron energy loss spectroscopy spectra with the help of a recently developed reverse Monte Carlo technique. The method is based on a direct physical modeling of electron transportation with an optimization procedure of the energy loss function (ELF). The optical constants and the electron inelastic mean free path were obtained after verifying the accuracy of the derived ELF with the f- and $ps$-sum rules. This approach provides a valid and universal tool to investigate intrinsic properties of metals by using the electron energy loss spectroscopy technique.