Objective With the rapid development and low cost of pulsed lasers, the preparation of high-performance films by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) has become a research hotspot recently. Compared with other film preparation technologies, PLD has many advantages. First, PLD can fabricate most film materials, such as metal films, alloy films, carbon films, compound films, and composite films, due to the high energy density of laser. The crystal structure, micromorphology, and particle dimension of films are controllable and designable by regulating the processing parameters such as laser energy density, background gas pressure, background gas type, substrate material, substrate temperature, and deposition tilt angle. The multicomponent films with desired stoichiometric ratio can be easily obtained by PLD, which contributes to the preparation of multicomponent compound and alloy films. Owing to the high velocity and energy of plasma plume from the laser ablation, the substrate temperature required for film growth is relatively low, even at room temperature. In addition, PLD possesses a high deposition rate, which can attain more than 10 μm/min. Therefore, PLD has become one of the best film deposition technologies. In the past decade, the mechanism of PLD was revealed, and the most cutting-edge research in this field was mainly focused on the preparation and application of film materials. The applications cover many relevant fields such as optoelectronics, sensing, biology, superconductivity, new energy, tribology, catalysis, and electronic packaging. The material forms include zero-dimensional quantum dot doping, one-dimensional nanowires (rods), two-dimensional thin films, and three-dimensional thick films. Current studies show that the film materials prepared by PLD technology possess a very large material system. Therefore, the research status of high-performance films by PLD recently is reviewed systematically from the perspective of material systems, and the application fields are summarized.

Progress Five types of film materials by PLD—metal films, alloy films, carbon films, compound films, and composite films—are summarized. Notably, metal films are one of the simplest film materials. Researchers commonly employ metals to study the effect of deposition parameters on film structure and morphology. Metal films are easily oxidized in the deposition process with high energy input. Therefore, most metal film materials were prepared under a high vacuum or in an inert atmosphere. At present, metal materials by PLD mainly include inert metals such as gold, silver, and copper along with active metals such as niobium, aluminum, and iron ( Fig. 2). Compared with metal films, alloy films can exploit the advantages and characteristics of various metals to obtain better performance or new properties. Therefore, alloy films have significant research and application value. PLD can prepare not only simple binary system alloy films such as AgCu ( Fig. 3), AuAg, and PtAg but also complex multisystem alloy films such as Heusler alloy and high-entropy alloys. Recently, PLD has become a significant method for preparing carbon films, including graphene, diamond-like carbon films, and nanostructured porous carbon films ( Fig. 4). Compound film is currently one of the most common and widely used material types. Because PLD has the characteristic of keeping the composition of the target and film consistent, the film composition can be controlled by the target to fabricate oxide, nitride, sulfide, and compound films with more complex compositions. Sometimes composition control is also performed by reaction with background gas during the PLD process. Compared with elemental metal films, the mechanism of preparing compound films is more complicated, and the requirements for composition and crystal structure control are more stringent. Therefore, the richness of the material system is far greater than that of elemental metal films. At present, compound films mainly include metallic and nonmetallic compound films ( Fig. 5). In addition, there are a few reports on the preparation of phthalocyanine organic compound films by PLD recently. Composite films prepared by PLD possess good design flexibility, which can combine the advantages of multiple materials by structural and material designs ( Fig. 6). Composite films have become a hotspot.

The application of the films by PLD in optoelectronics, new energy, biology, superconductivity, and electronic packaging fields has attracted much attention. In the optoelectronics field, two-dimensional compound thin films are mainly used to acquire excellent photoelectric detection performance. In the new energy field, high-performance functional films are mainly applied as photoluminescent materials and electrodes in photovoltaic cells, fuel cells, and lithium batteries. In the biology field, the film prepared by PLD is mainly used as a bacteriostatic coating. In the superconductivity field, high-temperature superconducting films such as Y-Ba-Cu-O(YBCO) films and low-temperature superconducting films such as niobium films are fabricated and their superconducting properties are explored and controlled. In the electronic packaging field, organic-free nanostructure films are prepared for interconnecting SiC power dies and substrates.

Conclusion and Prospect High-performance films by PLD are becoming a hot research direction due to the advantages of PLD, and they have been applied in many relevant fields. However, there are some technical and engineering problems, such as large particle splash and the bottleneck of large-area uniform deposition. From the perspective of process, the development of PLD particle control technology can immensely improve the surface problems due to the large particle splash. In addition, large-area deposition technology is continuously developing and an 8-inch large-area uniform deposition in the literature has been achieved. From the perspective of technology, with the continuous progress of laser technology, the type of laser used in PLD will develop from long pulse nanosecond laser to picosecond and femtosecond laser. Therefore, PLD preparation of high-performance film materials has potentials for industrial application.