DARPA seeks non-thermal approaches to thin-film deposition

When the Department of Defense (DoD) wants to build a jet engine, it doesn’t put a team of engineers in a hangar with a block of metal and some chisels.  Jet engines are made up of individual components that are carefully assembled into a finished product that possesses the desired performance capabilities.  In the case of thin-film deposition—a process in which coatings with special properties are bonded to materials and parts to enhance performance—current science addresses the process as though it is attempting to build a jet engine from a block of metal, focusing on the whole and ignoring the parts.  Like a jet engine, the thin-film deposition process could work better if it was addressed at the component level.

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