Growth and Fabrication


Growth: Sputtering

Dedicated sputtering chambers for growing different materials. Power supply carts allow flexible configuration of sputtering guns for DC, RF, or HIPIMS sputtering.



Sputtering Lane. From right to left, these chambers are used to grow BiFeO3, metals, SrRuO3, BaBiO3/BaPbO3, PMN-PT, and Nb3Sn.

Nitride Chamber. Sputtering chamber for reactive sputtering of nitride thin films, specifically antiperovskite nitrides. Cryopump and turbopump pumping to reduce oxygen background.


Sputtering with in-situ High Pressure RHEED. Two off-axis magnetron sputtering guns with opposing magnets configurations allow the high pressure RHEED to operate with little to no beam deflection for atomic layer control of superlattices and heterostructures.



Growth: Metal-Organic Pulsed Laser Deposition (MOPLD)

Iterating on the recent advancedments in Hybrid PLD, our group has developed the first chambers that combine PLD and MOCVD. A precursor gas is used to supply a flux of A-site or B-site atoms and due to the absorption control behavior of the precursor gas, a growth window is available in which perfect stoichiometry is possible.


MOPLD. Our newest chamber in the lab is custom designed with a 4 target scanning-PLD system as well as 5 sample-facing source ports that can be used for MBE sources, gas sources, or thermal evaporation. Standard resistive block sample heaters can be used or diode laser heating is available if higher sample temperatures are required. A STAIB Instruments' RHEED and Auger Probe are both installed for in-situ analysis and a beam flux monitor can be used for calibrating source fluxes. Two source ports are equipped with retractable sources allowing sources to be swapped without breaking vacuum.

See our Build Log of this chamber

Test MOPLD. This chamber can be setup with one PLD target and one metal-organic precursor allowing for quick testing of new MOPLD-grown materials and for the testing of new precursors.



Growth: Pulse Laser Deposition (PLD)

PLD chambers are split between two seperate 248nm laser beamlines powered by Coherent LPXpro 305 lasers each with an output power of up to 40 Watts (50 hz, 1100 mJ), which is high enough to instantly excite any material in our PLD chambers into a plasma state.


Main PLD. This chamber has been specially adapted for growing films in an oxygen environment while retaining the ability to monitor the structure using Reflected High Energy Electron Diffraction (RHEED). This chamber has the ability to control the growth of films on the sub-unit-cell level.


Hybrid Chamber. A hybrid system designed to combine both PLD and sputtering in a single chamber, allowing the user to switch between the two film growth techniques without breaking vacuum. It is fully-automated controlled using LabView, and is equipped with a load-lock and RHEED for in-situ surface analysis.

Pnictide Chamber. This dedicated PLD chamber is used for growing FeAs-based thin films, which are a novel material interesting for their superconducting properties.




Fabrication: Clean Room, Ion Milling, Target Room


Clean Room. Our clean room is equipped with a mask aligner, wire bonder, optical microscope, spin coater, and a wet bench.


Ion Milling. To create features and devices, Argon ion milling can be used with a spin coated or shadow mask to remove sections of thin film. Features include a LN2 sample coldhead and a variable angle stage.


Target Room. In order to grow novel materials, we prepare our own sputtering and ablation targets for both the PLD and sputtering processes. Targets are prepared from powder specimens that are pressed into discs and sintered.