Energy and particle fluxes in PLD processes

The main advantage of the PLD process consists in thin film deposition by a plasma flow with high kinetic particle energy. The energy and mass balance of the particle beam formation generated by laser ablation is the key for qualitative and quantitative understanding of the fundamental processes. Thermal evaporation and inverse bremsstrahlung will be discussed in this context. For experimental estimation of the energy and mass balance several in-situ measuring systems have been installed, in particular the ballistic microbalance and electrical probes. As a representative example the ablation of aluminium and carbon by pulsed Nd:YAG laser irradiation in the intensity range of 108 W/cm2 is presented in more detail.