Optical measurement for solid- and liquid-phase Sb₂Te ₃ around its melting point

We have developed a system for measuring the complex refractive index of liquid- and solid-phase chalcogenide around their melting points. The system consists of a spectroscopic ellipsometer, an infrared heating system, and prism optics. As a container for the chalcogenide, we use a customized quartz cell, evacuated to several pascal level to avoid sample degradation. We adopted a measurement configuration that uses access from the bottom side, because a mirror-like surface which is necessary for optical measurement was naturally and easily created at the container bottom by gravity. We succeeded in observing the remarkable difference on the indices between liquid- and solid-phase Sb ₂Te₃.