Hyperthermal beams for the fabrication of thermoelectric thin films

The physical mechanisms at the basis of the formation of ultra thin films of materials are very sensitive to the energy balance at the growing surface. Particularly, this equilibrium is of crucial importance for the fabrication of complex materials, and in our study the fabrication of thin films of cobalt antimonide in the skutterudite phase as required for thermoelectric applications has been challenging. Using the pulsed excimer laser deposition in high vacuum we have studied experimentally the influence of the laser energy on the formation of thin films. Combining AFM observation of thin films and the dynamic scaling theory of growing surfaces we studied the respective influence of enhanced surface diffusion and cohesion during the deposition. We investigated the growth of smooth layer and of skutterudites crystallites in the deposits and the influence of the laser ablation plume. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.