Abstract

Pulsed excimer laser deposition is now recognized as an important technique for making in-situ superconducting YBa₂Cu₃O_7-x (YBCO) films. The ionic content of the laser-ablated plume plays a crucial role in the quality of these films.¹ The existence of a temporal bifurcation in the ionic content of the YBCO plume into a fast and a slow component has been reported.^2,3 A distinct correlation between relative enhancement of the slow ionic component and the quality of the superconducting YBCO film has been revealed.⁴ For a multi-component target, such as YBCO, the possibility of species dependent bifurcation, such as the attribution of the slow component to the slow moving Ba⁺ ions, has been proposed.³

© 1994 Optical Society of America