Ultra-Short Pulsed Laser Deposition of Oxides, Borides and Carbides of Transition Elements

Abstract

Oxides, borides and carbides of the transition elements are materials of great interest from a technologic point of view. Many of these materials are used in the form of thin films, so several techniques are commonly used to deposit them. Among these techniques, Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) performed using ultra-short pulse lasers, mainly fs lasers, presents unique characteristics in respect to PLD performed using conventional short pulse lasers. Indeed, the films deposited using fs PLD are often nanostructured, and this technique often allows the target stoichiometry to be transferred to the films. In this work, we will review the use of ultra-short PLD in the production of films obtained from transition metal oxides, borides and carbides, evidencing the advantages offered by this technique, together with the problems arising with some of the studied systems. We conclude that even if ultra-short PLD is surely one of the most important and useful deposition techniques, it also presents limits that cannot be ignored.

Controllable Thin‐Film Approaches for Doping and Alloying Transition Metal Dichalcogenides Monolayers

“…PLD (Figure 3d) is a versatile technique to explore the deposition and implantation of advanced thin films by the laser ablation of a high-density solid target using a pulsed excimer laser (25 ns, 248 nm). [52,53] The kinetic energy (KE) of species in laser-ablation plasmas used for PLD can be as high as 100 eV in a vacuum (e.g., amorphous carbon from the ablation of graphite), [52] allowing the exploration of defects and metastable phases in TMDs. [66,67] To reduce the KE of the species in plasmas, the gaseous molecules such as Ar and O 2 are introduced into the system from a gas cylinder to confine and slow the species.…”

“…Here, we briefly describe the characteristics of each thin-film technique (Figure 3). [13,30,53,54] Solid-source CVD (CVD SS ) [10,55] uses powder comprised of transition metals (TM) and chalcogens as the raw materials to fabricate 2D crystals above 550 °C. [29] For example, MoO 3 , WO 3 , Re 2 O 5 powders supply TM, and S, Se, and Te powders supply chalcogens (Figure 3a).…”

“…Reproduced under the terms of CC‐BY license. [ 53 ] Copyright 2020, The Authors, published by MDPI. e) Top–down, ion beam‐ or plasma‐assisted processes convert as‐grown pristine TMD into doped/alloyed samples by generating defects and supplying dopants to fill in the defects.…”

Laser irradiation construction of nanomaterials toward electrochemical energy storage and conversion: Ongoing progresses and challenges

“…Remarkably, a high-quality thin film with the desired thickness, architecture and composition can be obtained by rationally adjusting the aforementioned interdependent deposition parameters. [44][45][46][47]…”

Nanolayer Growth on 3-Dimensional Micro-Objects by Pulsed Laser Deposition

“…The development of PLD in the past few decades has already demonstrated its flexibility to grow inorganic, organic, and hybrid layers on a broad range of solid substrates. Among relevant developments, we may highlight the very efficient metal photo-ejectors for high-energy particle accelerators [ 3 ], the epitaxial growth of waveguide lasers [ 4 ] and high-power laser devices [ 5 ], the oxide nanocomposites [ 6 ] and glass systems [ 7 ] for optoelectronics, to the recent advanced superconductor [ 8 ], oxide, boride, and nitride [ 9 ] materials. Furthermore, PLD of polymeric materials has been successfully demonstrated since the 1980s [ 10 ] and remarkable progress in the deposition of polymers and biomaterials has been made [ 11 ].…”