Structure of laser deposited metallic alloys

The structure of metallic alloys grown by pulsed KrF laser deposition is examined by x-ray diffraction and compared with results from literature on sputtered and evaporated films. In general, the phases and structures obtained are similar, while laser deposited films often exhibit unusually enlarged lattice parameters in direction of growth, small grain sizes, larger extensions of the single-phase regions and sometimes better alignment of the grains. These differences can be explained by the approximately 105 times higher instantaneous deposition rate of the pulsed laser ablation process and the high kinetic energy of the deposited particles of up to more than 100 eV.