Effective dielectric function of a metal-dielectric composite with nonrandomly distributed particles

Summary The optical properties of a metal-dielectric binary composite with nonrandomly distributed particles were studied within the framework of the effective medium theory. All the particles, as usual, were assumed to be spherical and the nonrandomness of their distribution was achieved by forcing onto the system the correlation that prevents the metal particles from touching each other or the one that forces them to aggregate in pairs, either oriented at random or all alike. The drawbacks of the effective medium theory due to the assumption that the particles be very small were overcome by describing the scattering properties of the particles through their exact Mie amplitudes. Both kinds of correlation we considered turned out to have substantial effects on the onset of the percolation phenomena. The transition induced by the correlation of exclusion from a behaviour typical of the Bruggeman model to one more appropriate to the Maxwell-Garnett model was followed as a function of the exclusion radius. In the case of aggregation the onset of the percolation phenomena was found to be strongly influenced by the further introduction of an orientational order of the pairs. Based on work supported in part by the U. S. Army European Research Office through Contract DAJA45-86-C-0003 and in part by the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche through the Gruppo Nazionale Struttura della Materia.