Regina Dittmann: Pulsed laser deposition: Basic mechanisms and current trends

Seminar talk by Regina Dittmann, Visiting Professor from FZ Jülich. 

Pulsed laser deposition (PLD), now available at Lund NanoLab, is a versatile thin-film deposition technique particularly well-suited for multicomponent materials such as complex oxides. In this talk, we will explore how key parameters—such as laser fluence and background pressure—affect laser plume dynamics, and how these in turn influence film stoichiometry and defect reactions with the underlying substrate.
Looking ahead to the heterogeneous integration of oxides in future electronics, we will discuss the growth of oxides on two-dimensional materials such as graphene, as well as different approaches to fabricating free-standing oxide thin films.
While crystalline complex ferroelectric oxides have already been integrated into semiconductor memory architectures at the front-end-of-line, several challenges remain for back-end-of-the-line (BEOL) integration. These include high processing temperatures incompatible with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) devices, lattice mismatch with substrates, thermal expansion differences, the formation of unwanted interfacial layers, and the limited availability of suitable buffer layers.
The development of free-standing oxide membranes offers a promising pathway forward, enabling the choice of optimal functional materials without being constrained by the substrate or device. We will present several PLD-based approaches for fabricating such free-standing oxides.