The leading supplier of cutting edge technology

PLD: Pulsed Laser Deposition

Description: A method of growing thin films by evaporating a solid target under vacuum via a laser pulse

Recommended Product: Quantel Brilliant B

Principle

  • Under vacuum or active gas
  • Laser-target interaction
    => Creation of a plasma (= laser breakdown)
  • Transport of the material in gaseous phase
  • Deposition and growth on the substrate

2005 Courtesy of Dr. Iwata AIST - Ibaragi - Japan

Critical parameters

  • Target properties
    1. Absorption is a function of the wavelength, the crystallographic lattice, the degree of surface oxidation…
  • Laser properties
    1. UV wavelength :266/355nm or less (excimer lasers)
    2. Pulse duration: 10ns or less (ps, fs=>many worldwide publications mentioning clusters and droplets in that regime)
    3. Rep. Rate: Typ. 10Hz or more with Nd:YAG lasers
    4. Intensity: 100-500MW/cm²

Advantages of the method

  • Crystalline thin film formation (PLD on heated substrates)
    1. Textured films with a low density of defects
  • Sequential growth:
    1. growth (pulse)/annealing/growth (pulse)/annealing …
  • Epitaxial growth on single crystal substrates
    1. epitaxial growth of domains
    2. well defined epitaxial relationships
    3. epitaxial growth despite large lattice mismatch
      1. Up to 10%!

Applications and perspectives

Study of the correlation between the properties of the films and their structural and microstructural properties)



More recent works : doped oxides
  • spintronics ZnO or TiO2 doped with transition metals (Mn, Co, ….)
  • optoelectronics wide band gap engineering (ZnO doped with Mg, Cd, ….)
    1. planar optical amplifiers (Er and Yb doped oxides)
    2. emissive materials (Eu doped oxides)
    3. transparent conducting oxides