Growth process of nanosized aluminum thin films by pulsed laser deposition for fluorescence enhancement

Pulsed laser deposition was used to deposit aluminum thin films of various thicknesses ( t Al ) ranging from 5 to 40 nm and to investigate their growth process when they are deposited onto SiO 2 and Y 2 O 3 . Atomic force microscopy and x-ray reflectivity measurements show that the structure of the Al films are related to the wettability properties of the underlaying layer. Onto SiO 2 , ultra-smooth layers of aluminum are obtained, due to a perfect wetting of SiO 2 by Al. In contrast when deposited onto Y 2 O 3 , percolated Al layers are observed with apparent pore size decreasing from 200 to 82 nm as ##IMG## [http://ift.tt/1Dafemx] {${{t}_{{\rm Al}}}$} is increased from 5 to 40 nm, respectively. This particular morphology is related to partial dewetting of Al on Y 2 O 3. These two different growth mechanisms of alu...

N Abdellaoui, A Pillonnet, J Berndt, C Boulmer-Leborgne, E Kovacevic, B Moine, J Penuelas and A Pereira

Click for full article