Stoichiometry distribution of thin films deposited by laser ablation: Monte Carlo simulation
Abstract
An expansion of a bi-component laser plume into a dilute background gas is simulated using a combined Monte Carlo simulation method. The effects of different types of collisions taking place during the transport of the ablated species on their distributions when arriving at a flat substrate are shown. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the film thickness distributions of both components and, hence, the final stoichiometry distribution, depend strongly on the incorporation probability of the species. This probability is expressed as a function of both deposited particle energy and the substrate absorbing properties. These studies can facilitate the comparison of the simulation results with experiments and are of particular interest for pulsed laser deposition (PLD) of multicomponent materials.