Dual-laser ablation for particulate-free film growth

Abstract
A novel dual laser ablation process that leads to particulate‐free film growth is presented. A pulsed CO2 laser and an excimer (KrF) laser have been spatially overlapped on a Y2O3 target with a temporal delay between the pulses. The particulate density of the films grown by this method are at least three orders of magnitude smaller than the particulate density of a single excimer laser ablated film of similar thickness. In addition, a time‐of‐flight ion probe study indicates a sixfold enhancement of the plume species kinetic energies under dual‐laser ablation. The degree of the plume excitation is observed to depend strongly on the delay between the laser pulses.