Syllabus
1. Fundamentals: vacuum, low-temperature plasma, thin films, nanoparticles.
2. Thin film deposition by vacuum evaporation: free evaporation vs. Knudsen cell; electron beam evaporation, pulsed laser deposition.
3. Physical and technical basics of dc and rf sputtering; glancing angle deposition (GLAD); planar and cylindrical magnetrons; reactive magnetron sputtering; High Power Impulse Magnetron Sputtering (HiPIMS).
4. Plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD), plasma polymerization.
5. Synthesis of nanoclusters and nanoparticles by gas-phase aggregation; gas aggregation cluster sources.
6. Thin film morphology and surface statistics: roughness, correlation length, critical exponents.
7. Models of thin film growth: nucleation, growth and coalescence of islands, structural zone models, discrete models vs. continuum equations.
8. Overview of non-vacuum deposition methods of thin films.
9. Overview of methods of characterization of thin films.
Annotation
Physical principals of methods of the thin film preparation in vacuum: vacuum evaporation, dc and rf sputtering, plasma deposition of inorganic and organic films, Survey non-vacuum deposition methods.