An Angle-resolved TOF Study on the UV Laser Ablation of Tantalum Oxide

UV pulsed laser ablation of tantalum oxide at 355nm has been investigated by angle rest time-of-flight quadrupole mass spectrometric method. The measured TOF spectra show that the main ablation neutral products are O, Ta, TaO and TaO2, and the corresponding ionic species are observed with increasing the laser fluence, Their TOF spectra can be fitted by multicomponent Maxwell-Bolztmann distributions with a center-of-mass velocity, and the translational energies of the ionic species are independent on the laser fluence under our experimental conditions, The angular distributions of the ionic and neutral ablation products can be fitted by the expressions of acos(n)theta (n approximate to 26) and acos theta+bcos(n)theta (n approximate to 27), respectively, Possible mechanisms for the production of these species in the UV laser ablation process are discussed.