1st International School on Laser-surface interactions for new materials production: tailoring structure and properties

The purpose of the proposed Course is to provide participants with a comprehensive overview of fundamental principles and relevant applications connected with the exposure of solids to energetic laser beams. Such issues are important to develop novel materials with a specific control of their properties at the nanometer scale. The field is relatively young and it grew at a high rate in the last ten years, with a research explosion that has spurred worldwide activity. The main reasons are on the one hand the possibility to deposit virtually any material, including multi-component compounds, preserving the composition of the ablated target and generally avoiding post-deposition thermal treatments and on the other hand the simple experimental setup which is compatible with in situ diagnostics of both the plasma and the growing film. The basic interaction mechanisms between an intense laser beam and the material exposed to it, possibly in an ambient atmosphere, either chemically reactive, or inert are a challenge to scientists, while engineers are mostly interested to the characteristics of the deposited materials and to the possibility to tailor their properties through an appropriate tuning of the deposition parameters. Among the hot topics developed in recent years are ultra-short laser pulses to explore electronic excitation in solids and its relaxation with phonons in highly non equilibrium conditions, the synthesis of nanometer scale clusters and their assembling to prepare nanocrystalline films and the deposition of metastable systems.

Some well established International Conferences bring together every year many researchers in the field and allow for extensive scientific exchange. It is now time to schedule the first International School to educate doctorate students in the principles of laser-surface interactions especially in connection with the ablation processes. The proposed one-week Course will illustrate the deep interplay between experimental and theoretical investigations of laser induced surface phenomena. The addressed topics include radiation-solid interaction, surface melting, vaporisation, superheating, homogeneous and possibly heterogeneous nucleation, phase explosion and plasma formation, nanosecond and femtosecond laser pulses, film synthesis by pulsed laser deposition, cluster nucleation, growth and assembling on a substrate. The classes of considered materials span metals and alloys, ceramics and polymers. The main experimental techniques to characterize the plasma plume, the irradiated target and the deposited film will be addressed. The true interdisciplinary nature of the Course will help promoting fruitful interactions between researchers from such diverse fields as solid state and plasma physics, materials science, metallurgy, ceramic and polymer science.

Junior researchers are expected to particularly profit from the proposed Course. The School is planned for 60 students. Attention will be given to keep a truly international character of the event, also through a selection of the participants.

School Directors

• P.M. Ossi
• A. Miotello
• C.E. Bottani

Organisation issues

To stimulate the scientific interactions both between Instructors and students, the following timetable will be adopted:

Each student is asked to bring a poster with recent relevant results of his research activity. All the posters will be exposed on the first day and they will be removed at the end of the School.

Every day, between 19.00 and 20.30, some posters will be discussed in detail by the participants. During the School all posters will be considered.

Besides the Organizers, the following will be Lecturers at the School *:

• S. Anisimov, RU
• L. Zhigilei, USA
• N. Bulgakova, RU
• J. Reif, DE
• M. Dinescu, ROM
• C. Leborgne, FR
• R. Haglund, USA
• T. Lippert, CH
• D. Geohegan, USA
• D. Chrisey, USA
• I. Mihailescu, ROM
• W. Kautek, AU
• A. Luches, I

* The list of Lecturers is not yet complete.