An improved three-dimensional model for growth of oxide films induced by laser heating

In this paper we consider a three-dimensional hear diffusion model to expla in the growth of oxide films which takes place when a laser beam is shined on and heats a metallic layer deposited on a glass substrate in a normal at mospheric environment. In particular, we apply this model to the experiment al results obtained for the dependence of the oxide layer thickness on the laser density power for growth of TiO2 films grown on Ti-covered glass slid es. We show that there is a very good agreement between the experimental re sults and the theoretical predictions from our proposed three-dimensional m odel. improving the results obtained with the one-dimensional heat diffusio n model previously reported. Our theoretical results also show the occurren ce of surface cooling between consecutive laser pulses, and that the oxide track surface profile closely follows the spatial laser profile indicating that heat diffusive effects can be neglected in the growth of oxide films b y laser heating, (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.