Technology & Applications

LAZEC operates based on the phenomenon of thermocapillary transport under laser heating conditions. Localized heating of the liquid causes it to flow towards a cooler area, leaving only a very thin layer of the solution of the applied material at the laser’s point of action. This layer simultaneously dries, leaving a solid coating of nanometric thickness on the substrate.

This technology can be used to coat a wide range of substrates, including polymers, glass, and ceramics, with various materials that are either dissolved or uniformly dispersed in liquids.

It was specifically designed for the fabrication of extremely thin coatings, reaching single nanometers. However, depending on the formulation properties, material content, and surface characteristics, it can also be used to form films thicker than 1 micrometer with some unique properties.

The main advantages of LAZEC:

• Immediate drying: complete solvent removal is achieved during the coating process, eliminating flow marks caused by turbulent air, and the need to displace the wet substrate

• Contactless operation: fragile substrates can be used and the risk of contamination in minimised since the coated surface does not come into contact with any part of LAZEC

• Coating curved surfaces: the laser beam acts like a blade, scraping away excess liquid and adapting to the shape of substrates, such as lenses.

• Coating rough surfaces without altering their porocity: this allows, for example, the preservation of light diffusion properties after applying a thin coating on mat glass.

• Obtaining anisotropic properties: this includes applications such as polarizing filters or elongated mono-crystalline semiconducting layers for organic electronics.

LAZEC technology is easily scalable. Homogeneous coatings can range from fractions of a centimeter to tens of square meters. It can be integrated with any industrial fabrication process lines, for example, in combination with other coating, printing, and film processing technologies on either roll-to-roll or sheet-to-sheet systems.

Due to its combination of unique features not found simultaneously in any other thin-film deposition device, LAZEC is expected to find wide applications in precision optics, electronics, aerospace, medical devices, and many other rapidly developing industries.

LAZEC can be an efficient and effective tool for materials science due to its minimal use of valuable studied substances in order to perform necessary qualification tests.

So far, it has been successfully applied to fabricate 50 nanometer layers of organic semiconductors (both molecular crystals and polymers) and superhydrophobic coatings for optical lenses.

Notably, due to the application of CO2 laser (10.6 micrometers wavelength), the deposited photosensitive materials did not suffer from either photodegradation or thermal degradation, as their absorption band is beyond the laser’s wavelength.