Optical properties of NbCl₅ and ZnMg intercalated graphite compounds

We studied NbCl₅ and ZnMg alloy intercalated graphite compounds using an optical spectroscopy technique. These intercalated metallic graphite samples were quite challenging to obtain optical reflectance spectra since they were not flat and quite thin. By using both a new method and an in situ gold evaporation technique we were able to obtain reliable reflectance spectra of our samples in the far and mid infrared range (80-7000 cm^-1). We extracted the optical constants including the optical conductivity and the dielectric function from the measured reflectance spectra using a Kramers-Kronig analysis. We also extracted the dc conductivity and the plasma frequencies from the optical conductivity and dielectric functions. NbCl₅ intercalated graphite samples show similar optical conductivity spectra as bare highly oriented pyrolytic graphite even though there are some differences in detail. ZnMg intercalated samples show significantly different optical conductivity spectra from the bare graphite. Optical spectroscopy is one of the most reliable experimental techniques to obtain the electronic band structures of materials. The obtained optical conductivities support the recent theoretically calculated electronic band structures of NbCl₅ and ZnMg intercalated graphite compounds. Our results also provide important information of electronic structures and charge carrier properties of these two new intercalated materials for applications.