Abstract
We study the thermal evaporation of materials by irradiation with laser light to deposit layers with atomically precise thickness. Under ultrahigh to moderate vacuum pressures, a focused laser beam is directed to the front surface of a source target to heat it to temperatures suitable for thermal evaporation. The local heating, combined with efficient radiative heat dissipation at high temperatures, allows the evaporation of solid elements from self-supported targets, eliminating the need for crucibles. The temperature is controlled by a sensor on the back of the target with feedback to the laser power. Evaporating representative metals, we achieve ultrahigh evaporation temperatures exceeding 2000 °C as well as temperature stabilities of better than ±0.1 °C. Combined with laser substrate heating, this enables a thermal laser epitaxy process that is capable in principle of accurately co-depositing any combination of chemical elements at any substrate temperature under a vacuum pressure only to provide a mean free path exceeding the target–sample distance.
Highlights
Several physical vapor deposition techniques such as molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), pulsed laser deposition (PLD) and sputtering have been developed in recent decades, often intended for the study of specific thin-film material classes such as semiconductors or high-Tc superconductors
The source material may be ablated via high-energy laser pulses or sputtered with a plasma
High-quality epitaxial films are often produced by PLD or MBE
Summary
Several physical vapor deposition techniques such as molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), pulsed laser deposition (PLD) and sputtering have been developed in recent decades, often intended for the study of specific thin-film material classes such as semiconductors or high-Tc superconductors. The lowest vapor pressure materials have high melting points, in the range of typical effusion cell evaporation temperatures or even above.
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