Hybrid magnetron sputtering and pulsed laser ablation for the deposition of composite ZnO-Au films

A hybrid technique that combines magnetron sputtering (MS) of zinc oxide and pulsed laser deposition (PLD) of gold was used to synthesize ZnO-Au composite thin films. Three different laser pulse fluence values of 4.5, 13.6 and 20.9 J cm(-2) were used. Films of ZnO and Au were deposited separately by MS and PLD respectively to compare the growth by the individual and hybrid techniques. For the hybrid technique, no significant changes on the Zn concentration are observed when varying the laser pulse fluence, whilst the concentrations of O decreased and Au increased. The gold was incorporated uniformly throughout the thicknesses of the films as a second phase of nanoparticles. The presence of the gold did not modify the crystal orientation of the ZnO, which was a hexagonal wurtzite-phase with the c-axis perpendicular to the substrate. The ZnO-Au films were found to be thicker than the sum of the thicknesses of the Au and ZnO produced individually by MS and PLD, indicating that the hybrid technique incremented the net deposition rate. The emission of the laser ablation plume species, specifically neutral atoms of gold, was studied by optical emission spectroscopy to compare the individual PLD and MS-PLD processes.