Influence of oxygen pressure on Nd:LuVO4 films grown by pulsed laser deposition

High quality Nd-doped lutecium vanadate thin films on silica glass substrates were fabricated successfully by using a pulsed laser deposition technique. The properties of the samples were characterized by using X-ray diffraction, Rutherford backscattering, atomic force microscopy (AFM), and prism-coupling measurements. The RBS shows that the ratio of Lu/V in the film is 0.991, which is in good agreement with the target composition. X-ray diffraction results show that the degree of crystal orientation along (2 0 0) increases with increasing oxygen pressure up to 20 Pa. The refractive indices of the films determined with dark-mode prism coupling measurements are slight, smaller than that of the bulk crystal. An optimum 20 Pa oxygen pressure, at which the oxygen was leaked into the chamber as the reactive ambient, was determined.