MORPHOLOGICAL AND CRYSTALLOGRAPHIC PROPERTIES OF RARE EARTH OXIDES COATINGS DEPOSITED BY DOUBLE DUAL BEAM-PLD

Various rare earth oxide nanostructures were synthesized for the first time by dual-double pulsed gas feeding/pulsed laser deposition. The optically transparent and insulating nanostructures do not exhibit the standard columnar configuration of rare earth oxide thin films but rather dense structures and a significant chemical stoichiometry. More precisely, they exhibit single crystallographic low temperature phases with preferential textures, generally similar to that of the bulk used powder targets. For the cubic fluorine type CeO2 and Ho2O3 films, an epitaxial growth is observed with a special feature noticed in the case of the Eu2O3 nanostructure. For this latter, localized and very large oriented crystallites embedded in disordered packed pyramidal crystallites are observed.