Journal of the Korean Physical Society, Vol. 55, No. 2, August 2009, pp.

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A Black Metal-dielectric Thin Film for High-contrast Displays

Sang-Hwan Cho, Min-Kyo Seo, Ju-Hyung Kang, Jin-Kyu Yang and Sung-Yong Kang
Department of Physics, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon 305-701

Yong-Hee Lee
Department of Physics and Graduate School of Nanoscience & Technology,
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon 305-701

Kyu Hwan Hwang, Byoung Duk Lee, Joon-Gu Lee, Young-Woo Song and Jong Hyuk Lee
Samsung Mobile Display Co., Ltd., Yongin 446-577
(Received 15 May 2009)
We demonstrate a thin metal-dielectric structure that delivers low reflection and high absorption
over the entire visible spectrum. The thin black film consists of SiO2 /Cr/SiO2 /Al layers deposited
on a glass substrate. The measured reflectance and absorptance of the black film are 0.7% and
99.3%, respectively, when averaged over the range 380 780 nm. The total thickness of the black
film is only about 220 nm, and it can be used as a thin absorbing layer for displays that require
both broadband antireflection and high-contrast characteristics.
PACS numbers: 42.79.-e, 78.20.-e, 85.60.pg
Keywords: Black film, Metal-dielectric film, Contrast, Absorber, Antireflection

ite layers [810]. Both structures are able to achieve

high absorption levels while maintaining the total thickness below 1 m. Recently, several groups employed
metal-dielectric structures to reduce the reflection of ambient light and to improve the contrast ratios of OLEDs
[1119] and TFELs [20]. Although various studies have
been reported on metal-dielectric absorbers, the strategy for structural design and metal selection still needs
to be addressed in a more convincing manner. Most approaches are based on the use of a special alloy, named
Inconel (a Ni-Cr-Fe alloy) [6,1820]. Here, we propose a
structure that employs only normal metals, which is advantageous in manufacturing. Experimentally, we fabricate thin black-film structures composed of a metaldielectric multilayer, which exhibits both anti-reflective
and highly- absorptive properties over the entire visible
spectral range. Moreover, various material combinations
are investigated to realize thin black films suitable for
use in thin FPDs.

I. INTRODUCTION

Currently, various flat-panel displays (FPDs) have

been developed, including liquid-crystal displays
(LCDs), organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), inorganic thin-film electroluminescence (TFEL) devices,
plasma display panels (PDPs), and field-emission
displays (FEDs). In these FPDs, high contrast has
been one of the most required properties. For example,
when exposed to a strong ambient illumination environment, the FPD suffers unavoidable image contrast
degradation [1]. To alleviate this problem, a broadband
absorber is often introduced to reduce the parasitic
light achromatically [2]. The classical way to reduce
ambient light reflection is to use a black absorbing layer,
including a black dye or carbon black. Recently, several
approaches have been employed to increase the contrast
of FPDs by using black absorbing layers [1, 35]. In
these approaches, absorptive materials are added to the
metal-based electrode and reduce the reflection from the
cathode. However, the resultant black absorbing layer
is rather thick (a few hundred micrometers) and thus is
not suitable for applications where thickness is critical.
In comparison, metal-dielectric structures can be made
much thinner. There are two types, namely, metaldielectric multilayers [6,7] and metal-dielectric compos E-mail:

II. DESIGN AND SIMULATIONS

1. Basic Structure

In the design of the black film, the optical interference and the metallic absorption/dispersion are properly
taken into consideration to achieve optimal performance.

pcvcsel@gmail.com; Fax: +82-42-350-2510

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Journal of the Korean Physical Society, Vol. 55, No. 2, August 2009

Fig. 2. Absorptance of various 10-nm-thick metal films

calculated at 550 nm.
Fig. 1. Schematic representation of a thin black film.

A schematic representation of the proposed thin black

film is shown in Fig. 1. This film consists of a bottom thick metal layer, a phase-matching layer, a thin
top metal layer, and a phase-compensation layer. The
metal layers reflect and absorb light whereas the dielectric layers adjust the phases of the reflected light. In this
structure, the transmittance T is considered to be zero
because the bottom metal layer is supposed to be sufficiently thick. In other words, R + A = 1, where R and
A represent the reflectance and the absorptance, respectively. In our subsequent analyses, only the reflectance
will be discussed.
The basic operation of our structure can be understood by the interplay between two reflections from the
thin top metal layer and the thick bottom metal layer.
If a broadband low reflection is to be achieved, the amplitudes of these two reflections need to be comparable,
and the phases need to differ by approximately 180 degrees over the whole visible spectrum. To meet these
nontrivial requirements, we need to search for various
metallic systems with proper dispersion characteristics.
We employ characteristic matrix methods [2124] to obtain the optical properties of our designs. The dielectric
constants of corresponding materials are borrowed from
the SOPRA database [25]. For the experiment, we used
the values measured using ellipsometry.

2. Thin Top Metal Layer

In our design, the choice of a proper top metal material turns out to be critical for obtaining a broadband
uniform absorption. In general, it is not easy to maintain
a constant phase difference between reflections from any
two layers. In order to minimize the overall reflection,
we search for a thin metal layer that is highly absorptive.

Generally, the energy absorbed in the metal layer is proportional to the product of the refractive index (n) and
the extinction coefficient (k) [21] Metals having high n
and high k values are highly reflective at the same time.
Therefore, in order to obtain a high absorption value,
optimized n and k values are required.
An absorptance plot of artificial 10-nm-thick metal
films with various n and k combinations is shown in Fig.
2. We assume the free-standing metal films to be surrounded by SiO2 . Note that the red-colored area of high
absorptance is localized where both n and k values lie
between 2.8 and 4.5 Accordingly, both Cr and Mo are
expected to be good candidate materials for the thin top
metal layer.
A striking comparison between four different thin top
metals is shown in Fig. 3. The thin black films containing Cr or Mo as the top metal layer show a noticeably
reduced reflectance in comparison to those employing Al
or Ag. In this computation, the thickness of the absorbing top metal layer is adjusted to meet both amplitude
and phase-matching conditions. The two dielectric layers
are 80-nm-thick SiO2 and the bottom thick metal layer
is a 100-nm-thick Al layer

3. Thick Metal Layer on the Bottom

In our structure, the bottom metal layer is considered

to be thick enough so that no light will be transmitted.
To understand the loss mechanisms of the black film, we
plot the irradiance profile of an optimized thin black film
in Fig. 4(a). Note that over 95% of the light is absorbed
in the thin Cr layer. Therefore, one can expect the choice
of bottom metal to be of minor importance in the design of the thin black film. To support this point, we
compare the reflectance spectra of the above design with
various bottom metallic layers as shown in Fig. 4(b).
As expected, different bottom metals introduce minimal

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Fig. 3. (a) Reflectance of thin black films with different top metal layers (Cr: 10 nm, Mo: 6 nm, Al: 4 nm, and Ag: 10 nm).
The dielectric material is SiO2 (80 nm), and the bottom metal is Al (100 nm). (b) Magnified version of (a) corresponding to
the Cr and the Mo cases.

Fig. 4. (a) Irradiance profile inside a thin black film at 550 nm. (b) Reflectance spectra of thin black films with different
bottom metal layers.

effects on the reflectance. The thick bottom metal layer

functions only as a good reflector with negligible absorption.

4.
Layers

Phase-matching and Phase-compensation

In our four-layer design, the two dielectric layers (i.e.,

the phase-matching layer and the phase-compensation
layer) need to be carefully optimized to obtain a low
reflectance over a wide spectral range. Firstly, the thickness of the bottom phase-matching layer is adjusted in
such a way that the reflected light from the bottom metal
is approximately 180 degrees out-of-phase with respect
to that reflected from the top metal layer. The phasecompensation layer is added to widen the spectral width
of low reflectivity. Fig. 5 is plotted to illustrate the
effects of the phase-compensation layer Figs. 5(a) and
5(c) show schematic representations of the reflections of
waves from metal-dielectric structures without and with

a phase-compensation layer. For comparison purposes,

the amplitude reflection coefficients and the phase differences between two reflected waves (Wcr and WAl ) are
shown in Figs. 5(b) and 5(d). Here Wcr and WAl represent the reflected waves at the Cr and the Al layers,
respectively. In the case of the structure without a phasecompensation layer, the phase difference between Wcr
and WAl varies by almost 120 degrees over the visible
spectrum as shown in Fig. 5(b), and it is hard to satisfy
the out-of-phase condition over the entire visible spectrum. On the other hand, in the design containing a
phase-compensation layer, the phase difference between
WSiO2+Cr and WAl remains close to 180 degrees over a
wide spectral range as shown in Fig. 5(d). Consequently,
the reflectance stays very low over the entire visible spectrum as demonstrated in Fig. 5(e).
In general, dielectric materials exhibiting a weak dispersion are advantageous if one wants to observe broadband antireflection behavior [26]. Moreover, the lowindex phase-compensation layer is expected to deliver a
lower reflectivity in comparison to its higher-index counterpart because n = 1 in the incident medium. If this

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Journal of the Korean Physical Society, Vol. 55, No. 2, August 2009

Fig. 5. (a) Thin black film without a phase-compensation layer. (b) Amplitude of the reflection coefficient and the phase
difference calculated for the structure shown in (a) at normal incidence. (c) Thin black film with a phase-compensation layer.
(d) Amplitude of the reflection coefficient and the phase difference for the structure shown in (c). (e) Comparison of the
reflectance with and without a compensation layer. (f) Effects of dielectric materials of higher indices.

fact is taken into consideration, SiO2 , CaF2 and MgF2

are good candidates for the dielectric layer as evidenced
in Fig. 6(f).

metal, three different metals (Al, Cr, Mo) were compared. Table 1 summarizes four optimized designs with
different material combinations. It is interesting to see
that with our choice of materials, all the designs exhibit
a respectable performance.

5. Optimized Designs

Several structures were designed and compared based

on the understanding obtained in the previous sections.
In all cases, SiO2 was chosen as the low-index, lowdispersion dielectric material. Cr and Mo were tried as
the thin top metal because both have comparable real
and imaginary refractive indices. For the thick bottom

III. FABRICATION AND RESULTS

To verify our proposal, we decided to fabricate design
A because the deposition conditions are well established
for SiO2 , Cr, and Al. An electron-beam evaporation system was used, and a built-in thin-film crystal was ap-

A Black Metal-dielectric Thin Film for High-contrast Displays Sang-Hwan Cho et al.

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Table 1. Comparison of optimum designs.

Design
Design
Design
Design

A
B
C
D

Phase-compensation
layer
SiO2 (80 nm)
SiO2 (80 nm)
SiO2 (80 nm)
SiO2 (80 nm)

Top thin metal

layer
Cr (10 nm)
Mo (6 nm)
Cr (8 nm)
Mo (5 nm)

Phase-matching
layer
SiO2 (80 nm)
SiO2 (80 nm)
SiO2 (80 nm)
SiO2 (80 nm)

Bottom thick
metal layer
Al (100 nm)
Al (100 nm)
Cr (100 nm)
Mo (100 nm)

Average R
(380 to 780 nm)
0.8%
0.6%
0.2%
0.6%

Average A
(380 to 780 nm)
99.2%
99.4%
99.8%
99.4%

Fig. 6. (a) Cross-sectional TEM image of a black metal film. (b) Optical constant dispersion curves of deposited thin films
measured by ellipsometry. Solid lines represent the n value, and dashed lines represent the k value.

Fig. 7. (a) Reflection spectra of design A obtained from the vertical direction. The black line represents the measured
spectrum and the red line the calculated one. (b) Reflectance spectra of thin black films with different structural parameters.
(c) Images of the thin black film (right) and an Al film (left).

plied to monitor both the deposition rate and the film

thickness in situ. Al, SiO2 , Cr, and SiO2 layers were

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Journal of the Korean Physical Society, Vol. 55, No. 2, August 2009

Table 2. Structural parameters of the fabricated thin black

films.

Design A
Design A-1
Design A-2

SiO2
65
80
80

Layer Thickness (nm)

Cr
SiO2
16
40
18
60
14
60

Al
100
100
100

sequentially deposited on a glass substrate in an evaporation chamber. Since the dielectric constants of the
materials vary somewhat depending on the deposition
method and conditions [27], they were measured directly
from films prepared under identical conditions by using
ellipsometry. We adjusted the thicknesses of all the layers of design A by utilizing the measured dielectric constants. The thicknesses of all the layers were estimated
by means of transmission electron microscopy (TEM).
Fig. 6(a) shows a cross-sectional TEM image of the thin
black film whereas Fig. 6(b) shows the dispersion curves
for all the materials used.
The reflection spectrum of the sample was measured using a UV/VIS spectrophotometer (Perkin Elmer
Lambda 950). Fig. 7(a) shows a typical reflection spectrum obtained from the direction normal to the substrate. The average reflectance was 0.7% and was measured over the visible spectral range between 380 and 780
nm; this value is lower than that at the air-glass interface. The calculated reflectance [red line in Fig. 7(a)],
which is based on the measured dielectric constants and
thicknesses, reproduces the measured value quite closely.
To estimate the robustness of our design, we fabricated
several samples that differ slightly from design A. Table 2
summarizes the structural parameters. Still, the overall
performance of our thin black film remained satisfactory
[see Fig. 7(b)]. From this observation, we claim that
our thin black-film structure may tolerate variations in
thickness and dielectric constant that usually accompany
typical thin-film deposition processes. An image of the
thin black film is shown in Fig. 7(c), along with that of
an Al film.

IV. SUMMARY
We demonstrate a thin black-film structure that is
anti-reflective and highly absorptive over the entire visible spectrum. The choice of a proper top metal (Cr,
Mo) turns out to be important. A simple four-layer
metal-dielectric structure (SiO2 /Cr/SiO2 /Al/Glass substrate) exhibits a reflectance of 0.7% and an absorptance
of 99.3%, averaged over the visible spectral range of 380
780 nm. The total thickness of the fabricated thin black
film is only 220 nm, which is much thinner than those
of typical black absorbers. Moreover, our design is advantageous in that acceptable samples can be prepared

with generous fabrication tolerances. We would like to

emphasize that the average reflectance is less than 1%.
This thin black film could be used as a black matrix
material for LCDs and PDPs and/or as a low-reflection
wire-grid polarizer [10,2830] for LCDs and OLEDs.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by WCU (World Class University) program through the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation funded by the Ministry of Education,
Science and Technology (Grant Number: R31-2008-00010071-0) and by the Star-Faculty Project (Grant Number: KRF-2007-C00018).

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