Thin film deposition by magnetic field-assisted pulsed laser assembly

Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) has been used in the last few years for thin film preparation of a large variety of materials. In this technique, the plasma plume of evaporated species contains a large fraction of ions. In this paper, it is shown that by applying an 'axial' magnetic field (field direction, z, perpendicular to the target surface) and a 'transverse' magnetic field (perpendicular to z), it is possible to force and to direct the plume expansion outside the z-direction and to obtain droplet-free deposition. An original PLD cylindrical assembly has been built in which the axial and the transverse magnetic field arrangement are combined. The direction of the transverse field may be rotated around the z-axis. Droplet-free films may be deposited on six different substrates which are arranged on the circumference inside the chamber. Up to eight different targets can be ablated thus allowing multi-element films to be prepared. The propel ties of various single metal films are presented to illustrate the potential of this original setup.