Design and modeling of a new CO2 laser heater for thin film deposition applications

In this paper, we report on designing a new raster-scanned CO2 laser heater for homogeneous heating of the disk-shaped substrates. This new design aims at concentrating the laser energy near the substrate peripheral edge, which mostly tends to remain cooler than the inner parts during the heating process. A comprehensive heat diffusion model has been developed to predict the temperature and its homogeneity on the substrate depositioning face. This new kind of laser heater can favorably be used in preparation of nanostructured thin films where the shape and size of the embedded nanoparticles depend on the maintained temperature during the depositioning time interval. This heater can also be used for CO2 laser conditioning of the prepared thin films to enhance their damage threshold for high power laser applications.