A structural and morphological study of nanostructured gold thin films prepared by pulsed laser deposition in the presence of several inert background gases (Ar, He, and N2) and at various pressures (from 10 mTorr to 1 Torr) and target-to-substrate distances (from 1 to 10 cm) is presented. Structural and morphological analyses were undertaken using semiquantitative x-ray diffraction, scanning tunneling microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy. For each set of deposition conditions, the kinetic energy of the neutral gold species [Au(I)] present in the plasma plume was determined by time-of-flight emission spectroscopy and used to characterize the plasma dynamics. It is shown that all films exhibit a transition from highly [111] oriented to polycrystalline as the Au(I) kinetic energy decreases. The polycrystalline phase ratio is close to 0% for Au(I) kinetic energy larger than approximately 3.0 eV/atom and approximately 86 ± 10% for Au(I) kinetic energy smaller than approximately 0.30 eV/atom, irrespective of the background gas atmosphere. The mean crystallite size of both phases and the mean roughness of the films also follow a unique relation with the Au(I) kinetic energy, independently of the nature of the background gas, and nanocrystalline films with crystallite size as small as 12 nm are obtained for Au(I) kinetic energy smaller than 0.3 eV/atom.
