Thin Film and Significance of Its Thickness

Abstract

Thin film is a two dimensional material layer deposited on a substrate in order to achieve properties that cannot be easily achieved or not realized at all by the same material in its bulk form. The distinct property of a thin film is resulting from the unique way of making it, in the form of progressive addition of atoms or molecules. Thickness is the fundamental property of thin film and is closely linked to other properties which scale differently with thickness. Thus, thin films are not defined by their thickness alone. Thin films have a range of properties, based on their thickness used in a number of applications such as in optical coatings, tribological coatings, quantum well structures based on supper lattices, magnetic multilayers, nanoscale coatings, etc. Here effort is made to revisit the definition of thin film by highlighting significance of its thickness and briefly discussed the role of thicknesses in some of the applications such as monolayer, nanoscale coatings and multilayer and superlattice structures.