Plume propagation dynamics of complex oxides in oxygen

The influence of background gas pressure and deposition temperature on plume propagation dynamics of La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 in oxygen is investigated and discussed. Fast imaging analysis is exploited to obtain a complete set of images of plume emission at the typical oxygen pressures used in pulsed laser deposition of this material, and for deposition temperatures ranging from room temperature up to 900 degrees C. We have observed that the deposition temperature can induce a remarkable change on both plume emission characteristics, in the early stage of the expansion, and on the velocity of the species impacting the substrate during film growth. The results are interpreted in the frame of a simple model which yields consistent and quantitative agreement with the experimental data. Our findings point to an interesting cross-correlation among important deposition parameters, such as background gas pressure and deposition temperature, also suggesting that the optimization of processing parameters, such as background gas pressure and target-substrate distance, during the growth of complex oxides should be also performed as a function of the deposition temperature. (c) 2008 American Institute of Physics.