High-energy laser-assisted hybrid magnetron sputtering for enhanced thin film deposition

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The manufacturing sector remains a key driver in industry, with a strong effort in the advanced manufacturing of materials and devices for very specific applications. Many of those rely on or can significantly be enhanced using nanometric deposition/coating as provided by e.g. pulse laser deposition or magnetron sputtering. Both methods have specific benefits and demerits related to e.g. the control of composition or the area for homogeneous coverage. While there have been proposals to implement hybrid processes, a dedicated process to provide a stable and adaptable range of operation accessing the benefits of both techniques, is yet to be demonstrated. We have previously demonstrated the effect of laser pulses with fluencies exceeding the ablation threshold on the magnetron sputtering target, while it operates continuously. It has been shown that with fs, or ps laser pulses, the ablation threshold decreases very significantly compared to ns lasers and that the ambient pressure plays a significant role for the quality of deposited films. The aim of this proposal is the deposition of three dedicated thin films systems near room temperature using the hybrid approach for generating very specific structures and large coating areas. These thin films have strong technological interest while pushing different aspects of the deposition process to extremes. We plan to synthesize (Hf, Zr)O2 tunnel junctions, for neuromorphic computing that requires excellent control of the thickness in the range of a few nanometers. We then suggest hydroxyapatite, a biocompatible material for which large deposition rates and large area coverage are desirable with a need for a dedicated mesoscopic structure and ultimately the double perovskite Bi2FeCrO6, with a tunable bandgap for the bulk photovoltaic effect that relies on the control of magnetic ordering in a very narrow process window. In collaboration with our industrial partners and using the unique high-power laser infrastructure ALLS, we expect to demonstrate, based on encouraging preliminary results, that the our novel hybrid approach does not only provide stable intermediate growth conditions but an excellent potential to fine-tune the process parameters to a large variety of materials, deposition rates and areas.