Pulsed laser ablation of Nd and Pr carbides

In this work, we have evaporated neodymium and praseodymium carbides by a doubled Nd:YAG laser and we have studied the ablation plume by time-of-flight (TOF) mass spectrometry, intensified charge coupled device (ICCD) imaging and emission spectroscopy. The results show that in the gas phase the produced clusters have mainly the (MC2)n (where M is the metal) stoichiometry, irrespective of the characteristics of the starting material (pure carbide or mixed metal oxide–graphite powders), while the velocities of neutral and ions seem to be quite low with similar values for all considered particles. The overall data seem to indicate a process in which gas phase reactions play a pre-eminent role. Preliminary results on the deposited films, obtained from X-ray diffractometry (XRD Siemens D5000), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy, indicate that the films are amorphous in structure and their stoichiometry is very close to MC2.