The chemistry of the YSZ plasma plume was assessed by self emission plasma spectroscopy. An Andor Shamrock 163 spectograph with a 300 lines/mm grating and an Andor iStar ICCD detector with 1024 × 1024 pixels were used to collect the data. This combination of spectrograph and detector resulted in a bandpass of 257 nm and a spectral resolution of 1.5 nm. The gate width was adjusted with the delay time after ablation, and typically kept below 2% of the delay time. The resulting images obtained with the CCD camera consisted of one axis representing the wavelenght, and the other axis representing the spatial component. In order to compare the measurements, the intensities were summed along the spatial axis. All spectra were normalized between 0 and 1 after subtracting the minimum intensity. The wavelength scale was calibrated using reference tables29,30. In order to obtain information about the individual oxides, sintered powder targets of ZrO2 and Y2O3 were examined as well. The time of arrival and velocity of the YSZ plasma plume at the substrate were measured by imaging the visible part of the plasma, i.e. without a spectrograph between the plasma and the camera.