V-shape plasma generated by excimer laser ablation of graphite in argon: Spectroscopic investigations

Pulsed Laser Deposition of Carbon-Based Materials: A Focused Review of Methods and Results

“…Therefore, plasmas generated by such lasers can have an anisotropic expansion along the short and long axis of the rectangle (flip-over effect), thus affecting the sp 3 fraction and growth rate of the DLC films in turn [31]. Moreover, the occurrence of a peculiar V-shape in plasmas produced with excimer lasers has been recently observed by Ursu et al [69] and Cesaria et al [68]. These works, which described the formation of two lobes expanding at an angle from each other and recombining into a single plume at later stages of the plasma evolution, indicate how an accurate study of plasma dynamics and spatially resolved composition in the presence of such unconventional expansion behavior could be key to significantly improving the chemical and morphological quality of the deposited films.…”