Growth of thin films by laser-induced evaporation

Among the various material growth techniques, physical vapor deposition of thin films encompasses many experimental forms. They can be categorized into equilibrium and none-quilibrium processes according to the ways in which the source materials are vaporized. Equilibrium process is typified by thermal evaporation including the conventional resistive heating, the more elaborate e-beam evaporation. as well as molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). Nonequilibrium processes include sputtering and many of its derivative forms such as ion beam deposition. In comparison with these techniques, thin-film deposition by laser evaporation is less well known and does not fall cleanly into either category. Depending on the laserconditions, the evaporation process can be either thermal, nonthermal, or a mixture of the two.