Total Internal Reflection Ellipsometry

Spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE) with enhancement by the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) effect becomes a powerful tool for monitoring the adsorption of biomolecules on thin (metal) films as well as for analyzing the thin films themselves. In combination, these two techniques can safely detect changes of refractive index of the order 10-6 w.r.t surrounding media. 

Focus points

• total internal reflection ellipsometry (TIRE) 
    Kretschmann configuration
    home made microfluidic setup
    polyelectrolyte multilayers
• collocalised AFM+TIRE
    FIB landmarking

Equipment

Woollam VASE: IR, VIS (CEITEC), NT-MDT Solar II + Ntegra spectra (CEITEC) 

Papers

[1] Jung Y.W., Byun J.S., Kim Y.D., Hemzal D. and Humlíček J.: Study of the Interaction Between HSA and Oligo-DNA Using Total Internal Reflection Ellipsometry, JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY, 60(8), pp. 1288-1291 (2012), ISSN 0374-4884, doi:10.3938/jkps.60.1288. link

[2] Hemzal D., Kang Y.R., Dvorak J., et al.:Treatment of SPR background in Total internal reflection ellipsometry. Characterization of RNA polymerase II films formation. accepted in Applied Spectroscopy (2018), DOI 10.1177/0003702819826280, link. 

Production model for our home made TIRE cell: a two-way mixing part (left block) followed by a TIRE channel (right block); note the temperature gauge inlet (right-most opening).