Ultra-fast laser ablation and deposition of TiO2

In this work we report on the properties of the ablation plume and the characteristics of the films produced by ultra-fast pulsed laser deposition (PLD) of TiO2 in vacuum. Ablation was induced by using pulses with a duration of ≈300 fs at 527 nm. We discuss both the composition and the expansion dynamics of the TiO2 plasma plume, measured by exploiting time- and space-resolved emission spectroscopy and gated imaging. The properties of the TiO2 nanoparticles and nanoparticle-assembled films were characterized using different techniques, i.e. environmental scanning electron microscopy (ESEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). It is suggested that most of the material decomposes in the form of nanoparticles.