A Case Study to Address: “Is Your Pulsed Laser Deposition Chamber Clean?”

Abstract

Pulsed laser deposition (PLD) is one of the important techniques for the growth of oxide thin films, interfaces, and superlattices. It can also be utilized to implement diverse combinatorial approaches. Thin film growth using PLD hinges on various parameters that decide the composition, structure, quality, and finally the physical properties of the films, interfaces, and superlattices. In this paper it is demonstrated how the growth conditions inside the chamber during the growth can be judged from outside by combining in situ and ex situ techniques. An example of the growth of LaVO3‐SrTiO3 interface is given to elucidate the effect of repetitive growth on the chamber condition and hence on the reproducibility of the physical properties of the samples. The experiments suggest noticeable change in transport properties with successive deposition processes.

KTaO3—The New Kid on the Spintronics Block

“…The application of pulsed laser deposition (PLD) for the growth of oxides was pioneered by Venkatesan et al in 1987, who used it to grow thin/thick film of Y-Ba-Cu-O, following which the technique was used for other oxide superconductors and complex oxides, particularly the perovskite ferroelectrics. [32,[161][162][163][164] Among the several advantages that make PLD very attractive in thin film fabrication of multi-atom systems are: i) stoichiometric transfer of target material to the substrate, ii) high energy plasma generation, iii) hyperthermal reaction between the ablated cations and a reactive background gas (if present) in the ablated plasma, iv) tolerance to a wide range of ambient pressures from ultra-high vacuum to a few Torr. Typically, the PLD chamber is equipped with feed-throughs for a rotatable multi-target holder held a few cm away from a variable-temperature substrate holder, a window for admitting a high-power pulse-laser beam focused on the target.…”