Proceedings of the ALT International Conference on Laser Methods of SurfaceTreatment and Modification Held at Konstanz, Germany on 5-9 September 1994

摘要

The rapid development of laser sources opens up new and fascinating ways forusing light as a tool to characterize and modify surfaces and thin films. Quite remarkable progress is being made in improving lasers in their performance with respect to power, tunability, or generation of ultrashort light pulses. In particular, the application of laser diodes both as a direct light source and for pumping other laser materials is flourishing. Among the laser methods for surface treatment and modification a large variety of processes are under investigation, such as etching by laser induced chemical reactions, annealing and cleaning of semiconductor surfaces, or the maskless production of submicron periodic structures. Also film deposition by means of laser processing is widely being used, including high temperature superconductors and diamond like films. In laser diagnostics new time domains have become accessible by optical microscopy with femtosecond light pulses, and nonlinear effects are exploited e.g. to characterize adsorbates by their nonlinear optical response, or magnetic interfaces by means of the nonlinear magnetooptic Kerr effect. New materials with