Oxides, borides and carbides of the transition elements are materials of great interest from a technologic point of view. Many of these materials are used in the form of thin films, so several techniques are commonly used to deposit them. Among these techniques, Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) performed using ultra-short pulse lasers, mainly fs lasers, presents unique characteristics in respect to PLD performed using conventional short pulse lasers. Indeed, the films deposited using fs PLD are often nanostructured, and this technique often allows the target stoichiometry to be transferred to the films. In this work, we will review the use of ultra-short PLD in the production of films obtained from transition metal oxides, borides and carbides, evidencing the advantages offered by this technique, together with the problems arising with some of the studied systems. We conclude that even if ultra-short PLD is surely one of the most important and useful deposition techniques, it also presents limits that cannot be ignored.

中文翻译：

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过渡元素的氧化物，硼化物和碳化物的超短脉冲激光沉积

从技术的观点来看，过渡元素的氧化物，硼化物和碳化物是令人关注的材料。这些材料中的许多都以薄膜形式使用，因此通常使用几种技术来沉积它们。在这些技术中，使用超短脉冲激光器（主要是fs激光器）执行的脉冲激光沉积（PLD）相对于使用常规短脉冲激光器执行的PLD具有独特的特性。实际上，使用fs PLD沉积的薄膜通常是纳米结构的，并且该技术通常允许将目标化学计量转移到薄膜上。在这项工作中，我们将回顾在由过渡金属氧化物，硼化物和碳化物制成的薄膜生产中使用超短PLD的过程，这证明了该技术的优势，以及一些已研究系统产生的问题。我们得出的结论是，即使超短PLD无疑是最重要和最有用的沉积技术之一，它也提出了不可忽视的限制。