Effects of pulse laser duration and ambient nitrogen pressure in PLD of AlN

AlN thin films with a thickness in the nanometer range were prepared by pulsed laser deposition technique. We investigated the effect of laser wavelength, pulse duration, and ambient gas pressure on the composition and morphology of the deposited films. In all experiments we used AlN targets. We worked with three laser sources generating pulses of 34 ns48 nm (source A), 450 fs48 nm (source B), and 50 fs00 nm (source C). XRD, SEM, and profilometric measurements were performed on the obtained AlN thin films. We have demonstrated that duration of the laser pulse is an important parameter for the quality and performances of AlN structures obtained by pulsed laser deposition.