Laser Induced Phase Transformations in Thin Insb Films

Abstract

ABSTRACTThin In46Sb54 films have been prepared on glass substrates by flash evaporation. Films of 1000 Å were deposited at room temperature. After 7 mins' thermal annealing at 450ºC, an average grain size increased from 20 nm to 200 nm. Under exposure to a Fraunhofer diffracted pulsed Nd-YAG laser beam, the films showed different microstructures for different applied laser power. In general, five regions are identified: ablation region, regions with grain sizes less than 20 nm, grain sizes ranging from 400 to 1000 nm, grain sizes ranging from 200 to 400 nm and unchanged region. The previous five regions are counted from the center of the exposed area outward. The pulse duration is 16 ns. In this paper, an atomic migration mechanism is proposed to explain the power dependent microstructures changes. Transmission electron microscopy was mainly used to characterize the films. The application of this type of phase transformations in the phase change optical storage is also discussed.