About the book
A thin film is a layer with a thickness ranging from less than a nanometer to several micrometers which are deposited on the surface of bulk solid materials. The purpose of a thin film is to provide distinct optical, electronic, magnetic, chemical, mechanical, and thermal properties that bulk solid materials do not possess. Depending on the materials used and the desired properties, thin films can be fabricated by various deposition processes. These include physical methods (e.g. sputtering, E-beam evaporation, pulsed laser deposition, cathodic arc deposition, molecular beam epitaxy, and evaporation), and chemical methods (e.g. chemical vapor deposition, sol-gel, spray pyrolysis, atomic layer deposition, and electroplating). Thin films are widely used for many industrial applications, including as optical coatings (antireflective, and self-cleaning coatings) for lenses, windows, and optoelectronic devices; for energy generation (e.g. thin-film photovoltaics) and storage (thin-film batteries and supercapacitors); in gas- and bio-sensors; in electronic semiconductor devices (e.g. transistors); as hard coatings on cutting tools, modules and dies; as decorative coatings; and as bio-compatible coatings for medical implants and thin-film drug delivery. The prevalence of thin films across so many fields of research leads to a rapidly evolving technology where many impactful strides to optimize deposition processes and realize novel applications have been made recently.
This book intends to provide a comprehensive overview of the fundamentals, challenges, and trends in thin-film technologies, the recent advances in thin film deposition techniques, as well as the characterization and applications of thin films.
