IMR: Acquisition of Pulsed Laser Deposition System for Multicomponent and Multilayer Oxides and Student Training

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Technical AbstractMulticomponent and multilayer oxide films are well known to exhibit an exceptionally wide and rich range of electrical, optical and magnetic properties. As a consequence, these materials have a very wide range of technologically important applications in sensors, actuators, waveguides, dielectrics, energy storage devices, data storage, superconductors, and semiconducting devices. Pulsed laser deposition is an excellent technique for the growth of thin film oxides. This proposal relates to the acquisition of a pulsed laser deposition (PLD) chamber, which will be assembled together with an existing laser (Compex 205) and an existing reflection high energy electron diffraction (RHEED) system to construct a complete state-of-art PLD system for about half the cost of a new system. The PLD chamber has the ability to automatically steer the laser beam between targets to make atomically-controlled multilayers, and to create a continuous composition spread to enable combinatorial materials synthesis. The PLD system will be used in three major projects: nanostructured ionic materials, gas sensors, and magnetooptical materials, as well as a number of smaller projects. The broader impacts of this proposal are related to the use of the equipment by a diverse group of researchers: undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs, as well as visiting undergraduates and school teachers. Lay abstractComplex oxide materials, which are oxides of more than one element, are of great interest in many applications. Complex oxides can have very interesting and useful properties, such as tunable electrical conductivity, magnetization, optical and mechanical properties. For example, lead zirconium titanate is used as a piezoelectric actuator, in which an electric field causes the material to expand or contract, while lithium cobalt oxide is useful as the electrode material of a lithium battery. In microelectronic applications, it is desirable to deposit complex oxide materials as thin films, so that they can be incorporated into devices such as memories, optical components, or gas sensors. One excellent method for making films of these materials is pulsed laser deposition (PLD). In PLD, a high power laser is used to ablate a ?target? made of the desired composition, and the material that is ejected from the target deposits on a nearby substrate. This proposal concerns the acquisition of a vacuum chamber in which to carry out pulsed laser deposition, which will be made into a state-of-the-art deposition system by combining it with a high power excimer laser already in the PI?s laboratories. This equipment will facilitate research into devices such as gas sensors, and components for optical communications. The equipment will be used by a diverse group of researchers: undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs, as well as visiting undergraduates and school teachers.