Energy and dose characteristics of ion bombardment during pulsed laser deposition of thin films under pulsed electric field

摘要

Experiments on pulsed laser deposition of Fe films on Si substrates were performed with the aim to analyze the role of factors determining the formation of an energy spectrum and a dose of ions bombarding the film in strong pulsed electric fields. The amplitude of the high-voltage pulse (-40 kV) applied to the substrate and the laser fluence at the Fe target were fixed during the deposition. Owing to the high laser fluence (8 J/cm(2)) at a relatively low power (20 mJ), the ionization of the laser plume was high, but the Fe vapor pressure near the substrate was low enough to avoid arcing. Electric signals from a target exposed to laser radiation were measured under different conditions (at different delay times) of application of electric pulses. The Si(100) substrates were analyzed using Rutherford ion backscattering/channeling spectrometry. The ion implantation dose occurred to be the highest if the high-voltage pulse was applied at a moment of time when the ion component of the plume approached the substrate. In this case, the implanted ions had the highest energy determined by the amplitude of the electric pulse. An advance or delay in applying a high-voltage pulse caused the ion dose and energy to decrease. A physical model incorporating three possible modes of ion implantation was proposed for the interpretation of the experimental results. If a laser plume was formed in the external field, ions were accelerated from the front of the dense plasma, and the ion current depended on the gas-dynamic expansion of the plume. The application of a high-voltage pulse, at the instant when the front approached the substrate, maintained the mode that was characteristic of the traditional plasma immersion ion implantation, and the ion current was governed by the dynamics of the plasma sheath in the substrate-to-target gap. In the case of an extremely late application of a high-voltage pulse, ions retained in the entire volume of the experimental chamber (as a result of the laser-plume expansion) are involved in the implantation process. Therefore, the spread in implanted-ion energies depends on the configuration of the electric field inside the chamber. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.