Laser fabrication
Introduction
Freeform fabrication is a type of manufacturing process that allows the fabrication of 3D objects with a large variety of shapes, structure and composition. Laser-assisted chemical vapor deposition (LCVD) is a freeform fabrication technique that allows the deposition of micro-scale structures at a high growth rate with the flexibility of conventional CVD.
The LCVD process
During chemical vapour deposition (CVD), energy is given to a gas (the precursor gas) which contains the atom that we want to deposit. This energy dissociated the gaseous molecules by a series of chemical reactions in order to obtain a solid product (the deposit) on a surface where we want the deposition to occur (the substrate). This can be conceptualized by the following equation which describes the deposition of the gaseous species ABu :
ABu → A(↓) + u B(↑)