Final report submitted to the US Department of Energy (8/15/96 to 8/14/00). [Experimental and theoretical investigation of dual laser ablation for stoichiometric large-area multi-component film growth]

This research involves a systematic study of the dual-laser ablation process to understand the underlying mechanisms of the process, and to investigate the applicability of this technique to the growth of multi-component thin films. In this study, time-of-flight ion probe, emission spectroscopy, and species resolved CCD imaging methods have been used as in-situ diagnostic techniques to investigate experimentally the effect of the process parameters on the plasma ionization, ion spatial distribution, species velocity distribution profiles and expansion profiles for single component systems as well as individual elements of the multi-component material system Cu(InGa)Se{sub 2}. A theoretical model that is consistent with the experimental observations has been developed. Following tasks outlined in the proposal were successfully completed in the time period 8/15/96 to 8/14/00