Thin Films as Material Engineering.

Thin films are defined as a two-dimensional material created by condensing, one-by-one, atomic/ lecular/ionic species of matter in contrast to a bulk three-dimensional material. The thin-films have been used for more than a half century for making optical coating, electronic devices, instrument hard coatings, and/or decorative parts. However, e thin-film technology is still being developed on a daily basis since it is a key technology in the twenty-first century for the development of new functional devices. It is also noted that the thin-film technology saves materials and energy consumption. Thin film process is an environment-benign technology. Several deposition processes are used for the thin-film deposition including thermal deposition, chemical vapor deposition, and sputtering deposition. The present author has studied on the sputtering deposition for academic and industrial use for more than 40 years. The sputtering deposition carries exotic/interesting phenomena due to the presence of highly energetic sputtered species. In this paper, the first fundamentals of thin-film materials are described. Then several exotic/interesting phenomena observed in the sputtering deposition are discussed as possible future materials science and technology. The exotic/interesting phenomena include room-temperature growth of diamonds, phase control of high-Curie temperature ( T) oxide superconductors, multilayered structure with enhanced piezoelectricity, and extraordinary high-performance ferroelectric thin-films. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]