MODELING OF DYNAMICAL PROCESSES IN LASER-ABLATION

Various physics and computational. approaches have been developed to g lobally characterize phenomena important for film growth by pulsed-las er deposition of materials. These include thermal models of laser-soli d target interactions that initiate the vapor plume, plume ionization and heating through laser absorption beyond local thermodynamic equili brium mechanisms, hydrodynamic and collisional descriptions of plume t ransport, and molecular dynamics models of the interaction of plume pa rticles with the deposition substrate.