Definition of thin films. Environment, methods, and physical mechanism in physical vapor deposition and chemical vapor deposition. Vacuum Techniques, including acquisition, scaling, vacuum systems, and leakage testing. The physics, structure, and generation mechanism of plasma. Practical electric discharge configuration for deposition of thin films, direct current electric discharges, radio-frequency discharges, microwave discharges, electron cyclotron resonance plasma, matching units, floating potential, bias potential, plasma potential, effective bias, self-bias. Working mechanism, structure, and necessary parts of thermal evaporation, sputtering and chemical vapor deposition. Thin film deposition technics, including thermal evaporation, e-beam evaporation, pulsed laser deposition, molecular beam epitaxy, magnetron sputtering, metal-organic chemical vapor deposition, and plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition.

CILO-1: Students will be able to design vacuum systems and explain the function of the parts on a vacuum system. CILO-2: Students will be able to explain the working mechanism of thermal evaporation, design and operate a thermal evaporation system. CILO-3: Students will be able to explain the gas discharge process, describe the structure of glow discharge and explain the working mechanism of a sputtering system. CILO-4: Students will be able to introduce the method of CVD and design and construct CVD system according to the practical need. CILO-5: Students will be able to select the proper method to deposit thin films for different requirements.