Particulate reduction in ternary-compound film growth via pulsed laser deposition from segmented binary-targets

Abstract

We present the hetero-epitaxial growth of high-quality crystalline Y3Ga5O12 onto a 100-oriented YAG substrate via pulsed laser deposition, using mixed ternary-compound and segmented binary-compound targets. We observe that a Y3Ga5O12 film fabricated using a segmented target (Y2O3/Ga2O3) contained ∼100 times fewer scattering points than a film grown using a mixed Y3Ga5O12 target. We show that following ablation, the surface of the mixed compound (ternary) target had laser-induced cone structures, whereas the surface of single compound (binary) targets did not. It is concluded that the different ablation dynamics of the oxide constituents in the respective targets plays a significant role in the origin of the scattering points in the resultant films.