The relative error of the optical constants determined by attenuated total reflectance at two polarizations and the same incidence angle is calculated as a function of the reflectance errors by a perturbation method. The variations in the error as a function of the incidence angle are then plotted for various values of the optical constants. The experimental accuracy is optimized by either shallow incidence angles and low index optics or by high index optics in the close vicinity of the critical angle. In either case, the number of reflections should be chosen to give strong attenuation. Under optimum conditions, the method gives reasonably good accuracies.
