Dynamics of pulsed laser ablation for thin film growth

Fast imaging and sensitive spectroscopic investigations of laser ablation plume propagation reveal fundamental collisional phenomena relevant to film growth by pulsed laser deposition and optimized cluster growth via laser vaporization. Two phenomena will be described. The first involves the splitting of the ablation plume into distinct high and low energy components as a weak shock front forms during ablation into a low-density background gas. The second involves the dynamics of graphite ablation for vacuum deposition of tetrahedrally coordinated amorphous diamond films.