We present results of a systematic growth study on the substrate temperature-driven de-wetting of thin films as a reference compound for the heavy-fermion superconductor CeColI(5). This study is by the last results on the improved surface morphology and in-plane orientation preference of oriented CeCoIn5 thin films. In apparently phase pure CeIn3 thin films, as far as x-ray diffraction can find evidence for minor In segregation by means of percolating resistance contributions of In in the argue that further efforts into improving the films' morphology towards optimized surfaces preparation of macroscopic planar tunnel junctions may be futile. As an alternative approach, we results of electronic transport measurements on CeIn3 and CeCoIn5 microcrystals isolated from the thin by means of focused particle beam induced processing, such as focused ion beam milling and (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.