A Novel Optical Source for the Vaporization and Deposition of Polymers

This project will develop a novel source of high power (>MW) picosecond pulses of tunable coherent mid-infrared radiation to be used to ablate polymers and organic materials and deposit them to form thin films from the vapour phase using resonant infra-red pulsed laser deposition (RIR-PLD). RIR-PLD is a new process capable of vaporizing organics without breaking their chemical bonds, and can be used to deposit technologically-important organic thin films providing advantages compared with existing technologies for film deposition. At present no practical optical source for RIR-PLD exists and this will be addressed in this project. Experiments to improve the fundamental understanding of RIR-PLD will also be carried out.