An improved continuous compositional-spread technique based on pulsed-laser deposition and applicable to large substrate areas
Abstract
A new method for continuous compositional-spread (CCS) thin-film fabrication based on pulsed-laser deposition (PLD) is introduced. This approach is based on a translation of the substrate heater and the synchronized firing of the excimer laser, with the deposition occurring through a slit-shaped aperture. Alloying is achieved during film growth (possible at elevated temperature) by the repeated sequential deposition of sub-monolayer amounts. Our approach overcomes serious shortcomings in previous in-situ implementations of CCS based on sputtering or PLD, in particular the variations of thickness across the compositional spread and the differing deposition energetics as function of position. While moving-shutter techniques are appropriate for PLD-approaches yielding complete spreads on small substrates (i.e. small as compared to distances over which the deposition parameters in PLD vary, typically about 1 cm), our method can be used to fabricate samples that are large enough for individual compositions to be analyzed by conventional techniques, including temperature-dependent measurements of resistivity and dielectric and magnetic and properties (i.e. SQUID magnetometry). Initial results are shown for spreads of (Sr,Ca)RuO.
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0306452,
title = {An improved continuous compositional-spread technique based on pulsed-laser deposition and applicable to large substrate areas},
author = {H. M. Christen and C. M. Rouleau and I. Ohkubo and H. Y. Zhai and H. N. Lee and S. Sathyamurthy and D. H. Lowndes},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0306452},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
6 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Rev. Sci. Instrum