Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 February 2011
We present a handy new method of optical investigation of thin semiconductor layers regardless of the substrate's composition and structure. The method was especially developed for the particular case of thin (˜ 1μm ) CdTe films obtained by means of electrochemical deposition on conducting glass for further solar cell applications. The procedure consists in transmission and reflection (or the transmission only) measurements under different thicknesses of the semiconductor layer and following semi-analytical treatment of the data. Finally we obtain the frequency dependencies of the real and imaginary parts of the refractive index for the semiconductor material of the layer.