Hard coatings

Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) has been proven to be an ideal technique for the deposition of wear and scratch resistance films on soft materials like plastics and even on many metals. Typical hard coatings are formed from oxides, carbides, nitrides or diamond like carbon thin films. Hard coatings can be colored or transparent which enables their use on various products like displays and optical lenses.

The PLD process involves laser-solid interaction at the target, plasma formation and directional transport of material to the substrate on which deposition takes place (see figure). When PLD utilizes high radiance laser pulses in the picosecond range, the high impact energies causes the ablated atoms / molecules to stick to the surface, and be compressed, forming a dense continuous film. The basic requirements for hard coating process development, in addition to wavelength, are target material, fluence (J/cm²), vacuum conditions, pressure of ambient gas etc. Some of the initial demo film made by X-LASE are shown in the photo above.