Modeling of thermal, electronic, hydrodynamic, and dynamic deposition processes for pulsed-laser deposition of thin films

Various physical processes during laser ablation of solids for pulsed-laser deposition (PLD) are studied using a variety of computational techniques. In the course of our combined theoretical and experimental effort, we have been trying to work on as many aspects of PLD processes as possible, but with special focus on the following areas: (a) the effects of collisional interactions between the particles in the plume and in the background on the evolving flow field and on thin film growth, (b) interactions between the energetic particles and the growing thin films and their effects on film quality, (c) rapid phase transformations through the liquid and vapor phases under possibly nonequilibrium thermodynamic conditions induced by laser solid interactions, (d) breakdown of the vapor into a plasma in the early stages of ablation through both electronic and photoionization processes, (c) hydrodynamics behavior of the vapor/plasma during and after ablation. The computational techniques used include finite difference (FD) methods, particle-in-cell model, and atomistic simulations using molecular dynamics (MD) techniques.