Studies of novel materials produced by laser ablative deposition

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This is a research proposal to study the growth and properties of crystalline films and nanostructures. The growth technique is pulsed laser deposition, a process where an intense UV pulse is used to vapourize a plume of material that is subsequently used to form the film. In many respects the electronic, optical and even structural properties of a film are determined by the first few atomic layers. As a result, interfacial engineering of those first few layers can have a dramatic impact on the resulting film or can even produce a novel interfacial material. Through advances in analytical technicques, we can now extract important chemical information about the atoms at the interfaces. Combined with improvements in film deposition, this opens new opportunities for both fundamental science and important applications such as photovoltaics. The research proposed seeks to take advantage of those opportunities to develop materials specifically of interest for photovoltatic and other applications. These include both uniform films and intricate nanostructures that self-assembly under appropriate conditions. Specific materials to be studied are LaAlO3, SrTiO3, CdTe, FeS2, gold and silver.