vapour deposition

Vapor deposition is a material science technique used to create thin solid layers on a surface. This process involves chemical reactions occurring in a high-temperature gas close to the surface, leading to the deposition of a substance.1

A common application of vapor deposition is in epitaxy, where a crystal layer is grown on another crystal, with the orientation determined by the underlying crystal. This is crucial for manufacturing semiconductor wafers used in integrated circuits and optoelectronic devices. Epitaxy can involve growing layers of the same material (homoepitaxy) or different materials (heteroepitaxy).2

Vapor condensation techniques are also used to prepare amorphous solids by depositing atoms from a gas phase onto a cold substrate. This method bypasses the liquid phase and can create thin films of amorphous materials, such as pure silicon.3