ABSTRACT
For the past few decades, pulsed laser ablation has been known
from an industrial point of view as a typical method to form
a thin film on a substrate.1 This method is also called pulsed
laser deposition because the thin film is formed under vacuum by
depositing laser-generated nanoparticles on the substrate. In the
last decade, nanoparticles themselves have attracted considerable
attention. This is because numerous new properties that do not exist
in a bulk material have recently been discovered in nanoparticles,
nanocrystals, and nanoclusters.2,3 These novel properties have been
introduced in functional materials for catalysis, chemo/biosensing,
optics, photothermal therapy, and data storage.4