Light scattering from aggregated silver and gold films

The spectral distribution of the scattered irradiance at 40° in the forward direction and at 140° in the backward direction have been measured for a series of five silver films and five gold films, in the visible and near infrared. The films were produced by evaporation to form a highly aggregated structure, with particles that had a somewhat-limited size variation for each film; the modal sizes ranged from 275 to 4000 Å for the silver films, and from 160 to 740 Å for the gold films. The experimental curves showed maxima in the spectral region studied, except for silver backscattering.