LASER-ASSISTED CHEMICAL VAPOR-DEPOSITION OF HARD AND REFRACTORY BINARY COMPOUNDS

Hard and refractory materials have been produced by both thermally activated chemical vapor deposition (TACVD) and plasma-activated CVD (PACVD). With the progress of laser processing of materials, new opportunities, including localized deposition and tailoring of reaction pathways, are created. This opens possibilities to prepare new materials and structures for various applications. For laser-assisted CVD (LCVD) there are several requirements of the precursors. In thermal LCVD (laser beam focused onto the substrate surface) the homogeneous reactions in the vapor are suppressed since the hot zone has extremely small dimensions (microns). This means that the precursors themselves must have a high sticking coefficient. In addition to the effects in TACVD, photochemical reactions may be induced in LCVD. This may result in a lower deposition temperature and growth of new phases with artificial microstructures. In this paper an overview of LCVD of hard and refractory binary compounds is given together with the characteristics of the LCVD processes employed.