High pure Gold powder was taken as starting material to prepare robust target for electron beam evaporation. The films were deposited on ultrasonically cleaned (100) oriented Silica substrate maintained at a substrate temperature of 573K. The vacuum chamber was evacuated by a Diffusion pump to a base vacuum better than 10−6 Torr, allowed inert gas in to chamber to maintain inert atmosphere under 5x10−5 Torr vacuum. The crystallinity of the films was investigated using GIXRD. The films were found to be polycrystalline in nature and crystallizes in a cubic structure with preferred (1 1 1) orientation. The surface morphology and compositional analysis was carried out for these films using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy (EDS) respectively. Thickness of the films was estimated by using stylus profilometer. Optical Absorption and reflectance measurements were carried out on Au thin films using UV-VIS spectrophotometer in the wavelength range 300nm-1000nm. The optical constants like band gap and other parameters were calculated from the optical absorption data. These films were found to be promising materials for Surface Plasmon Resonance Applications (SPR).
