RPF 13/14 Plasma-Enhanced Pulsed Laser Deposition: Innovative thin-film manufacturing technology for industry

The RPF project not only met the original objectives, it achieved impact beyond this in the international academic community.The project objectives were largely met, i.e.:- the experimental system for “plasma-enhanced pulsed laser deposition” was installed and commissioned.- “Plasma-enhanced Pulsed Laser Deposition (PE-PLD)” was established as a new research area. Experimental results from the new setup complemented modelling activities (published in a journal publication, Surface & Coatings Technology 260 (2014) 417–423) that show the feasibility of the proposed deposition technique.- A research grant on the PE-PLD topic has been submitted (currently pending). A decision was made to initially go for a Leverhulme Prize application since a relevant call came up. The originally planned EPSRC proposal is still in development with an anticipated submission by the end of Summer. The reason for the delay is the significant (inter)national interest in the topic which made selecting the most relevant project partners a slightly more complicated process. The result is that the size and scope of the EPSRC proposal is probably significantly broader than originally planned.Furthermore, the RPF award helped to generate direct impact of my work and ideas in the thin-film and plasma-deposition communities. My ideas were quickly picked up by the international academic communities resulting in 2 invited international conference presentations as well as a further 2 contributed presentations at leading international conferences in this field.Applications pending:  Title: Philip Leverhulme Prize 2015 - Physics.   Funder: Leverhulme Trust    Duration: 30 months   Expected start date: 1 Dec 2015   Amount: £100k