Pulsed laser deposition (PLD) is a physical vapor deposition (PVD) technique where a high-power pulsed laser beam is focused inside a vacuum chamber to strike a target of the material that is to be deposited. This material is vaporized from the target (in a plasma plume) which deposits it as a thin film on a substrate (such as a silicon wafer facing the target). This process can occur in ultra high vacuum or in the presence of a background gas, such as oxygen which is commonly used when depositing oxides to fully oxygenate the deposited films.
The process of PLD can generally be divided into five stages:
Laser absorption on the target surface
Laser ablation of the target material and creation of a plasma
Dynamic of the plasma
Deposition of the ablation material on the substrate
Nucleation and growth of the film on the substrate surface
