Laser deposition of metallic alloys and multilayers

The characteristic behaviours of pulsed excimer laser deposition (at 248 nm) of metallic alloys and multilayers are: high deposition rates of up to 3 nm/s above an ablation threshold of about 5 J/cm2, a nearly congruent transfer between target and film, droplets on the film surface, and a strong thickness dependence of the obtained films. Compared to sputtered or evaporated films the alloys obtained are characterized by similar structures in most cases, but often larger extensions of single-phase regions and enlarged lattice parameters in the growth direction, while multilayers sometimes have different textures, often a better alignment of the grains in the growth direction and in systems with a negative heat of mixing sometimes a different critical bilayer thickness for the formation of fully amorphous films. Therefore, the pulsed laser deposition is an attractive alternative thin-film technique for the deposition of metallic alloys and multilayers.