Significant tunability of thin film functionalities enabled by manipulating magnetic and structural nano-domains.

Highlights: [•] Dramatic structure variations of L10-FePt and superconducting YBCO thin films have been obtained by “simply” varying the laser frequency for pulsed laser deposition of these films, while keeping the thickness of the films constant. [•] The origins of structure variation with laser frequency for both Volmer-Weber mode grown FePt and Straski–Krastanov mode grown YBCO films are discussed and compared. [•] Deposition frequency increase from 1 to 6Hz leads to up to 20-fold enhancement of the coercive field in FePt films of constant thickness obtained by modification of demagnetization mechanism in laser frequency-varied structures (observed with MFM). [•] Varying growth kinetics of YBCO films by laser frequency leads to strong modification of dependence of critical current density on applied magnetic field (J c (B a )) with unexpected J c (B a ) reversal behavior with measurement temperature; such reversal behavior was never reported before; the mechanism of J c (B a ) modification is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]