Robert J. Lade, Ian W. Morley, Paul W. May, Keith N. Rosser and Michael N.R. Ashfold.

 ArF (193 nm) Laser Ablation of Poly(methyl methacrylate)

 Diamond Rel. Mater.(1999), in press.

We report results from a range of complementary studies of pulsed ArF (193 nm) laser ablation of poly-(methyl-methacrylate), PMMA, in vacuo, and in the presence of low background pressures of Ar and He, designed to identify correlations between the properties of the plume and those of the a-C:H films that result when the plume is incident on a NaCl substrate. The plume itself has been investigated by wavelength, spatially and/or temporally resolved measurements of the emission from electronically excited H*, C*, O*, CH* and C₂* fragments, and by Langmuir probe (time-of-flight) measurements of the positively and negatively charged ablated particles, as a function of laser fluence and of ambient gas pressure. Infrared absorption spectroscopy suggests that a-C:H films deposited following pulsed laser ablation of PMMA under low pressures of Ar contain similar C:H:O ratios to the parent polymer, but also confirms previous reports that films deposited in vacuo have a reduced H content.

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