ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses, physical vapor deposition (PVD), as a representative and most common technique for thin film deposition in micro- and nanoprocessing. A general meaning of evaporation is the vaporization of a liquid, but in thin film technologies, evaporation indicates a method to obtain solid thin films by vaporizing a solid under vacuum. Evaporation is often referred to as vacuum evaporation, vacuum deposition, thermal evaporation, and even vapor deposition. Molecules of a liquid get thermally activated and start vibrating. The distribution of the energy almost obeys the Boltzmann distribution. Atoms and molecules that form a solid substance are also in thermal motion, not as strongly as liquid, but can leave the solid surface. Vaporization can occur significantly when the temperature is increased near to the melting point because then the contaminants and oxides decompose and/or vaporize, resulting in cracks in the oxide skin that reveal a clean liquid surface.
