Abstract
Within the last decades thin film technology has advanced considerably and plays a key role in several industrial fields. The interest in developing high quality thin films with specific properties has drastically increased due to the rapidly growing needs in applications such as magnetism, semiconductor technology, microelectronics, optical films and microdevices. In the field of nanotechnology thin film deposition plays an important role as well and in certain cases deposition of layers of materials atom by atom is required. Therefore extended research is performed around the world in order to optimize the wide variety of the thin film deposition techniques. This paper focuses on the most common and important techniques used nowadays, which are briefly described, and on presenting a review of the latest developments in this field. Relevant patents are presented and discussed.
Keywords: Thin films, deposition methods, multilayers, microfabrication, microsystem design, microelectronics, microtechnology, nanotechnology
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