Thickness dependence of microcrack formation in YBa2Cu3O6+x thin films on NdGaO3 (001) substrates

Improvement of thickness uniformity and elements distribution homogeneity for multicomponent films prepared by coaxial scanning pulsed laser deposition technique

“…Pulsed laser deposition (PLD) is a powerful and versatile technique for growing films of a wide range of materials. It is especially suitable for depositing multicomponent films such as YBCO (usually YBa 2 Cu 3 O 6+x ) superconductor films [1,2] or CIGS (usually CuIn 0.7 G 0.3 S 2 ) films for solar cells [3] , or La 0.7 Sr 0.3 Mn 0.5 Fe 0.5 O 3 (LSMFO) thin films [4] . However, film thickness and elements distribution inhomogeneities in multicomponent films lead to band-gap fluctuations, which have a detrimental effect on the device performance [5−9] ; thus, maintaining a high level of uniformity of both thickness and stoichiometry is crucial, especially for large area films produce or experiments.…”