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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 February 2011
A new deposition method, inspired from the crossed fluxes technique, which employs a concave, conic-shaped target is presented here. The rectangular excimer laser beam used for ablation was focused so that the middle of the spot laid exactly on the tip of the concave-shaped target. Each half of the laser spot created a plasma plume on one side of the concave target which was the symmetrical image across the cone axis of that created by the other half of the laser spot. The heavy droplets passed through the plasma interaction region without collisions and, maintaining their direction of motion, moved away from the system axis. The majority of the ablated ions and atoms emitted from one side of the spot collided with those emitted from the other side and, because of the symmetry of the concave-shaped target, acquired a velocity component along the system axis, moving towards the substrate. Scanning electron microscopy investigations showed a significant reduction of droplet density onto the surface of hydroxyapatite layers grown from such concave-shaped targets as compared to films grown from the usual cylindrical targets.