Under this PYI award the process of laser excited chemical vapor deposition will be studied and developed for rapid deposition of films of diamond, born nitride and other nitrides. The process is a non-equilibrium process which relies on the number of molecular collisions and therefore should scale up with pressure. This will be quantified and the dominant chemical species will be determined by spectroscopic diagnostics. Film morphology, microstructure and mechanical properties will be correlated with gas phase chemistry in order to optimize the process parameters.
