Effective medium theory and its limitations for the description of MoO₃films doped with nanoparticles

The present work analyses the transmittance and reflectance spectra of molybdenum trioxide film doped by silver nanoparticles as a function of angle of incidence and wavelength. As will be seen in this work, at values of angle of incidence below 40 degrees and with volume filling fraction below 1% also, some differences between the two effective medium theories are presented. First, the volume filling fraction is limited for low values (<1%) and second the scattering amplitude cannot be ignored for these cases. The novelty of this work is that the use of the effective medium model (refractive index) shows limitations in the description of the optical properties when it was applied to thin solid films.