Pulse Thermal Processing, also known as photonic curing, is a unique annealing technique used to process functional materials requiring high temperatures on low-temperature substrates. Here thin films or materials are exposed to one or several high-intensity pulses of infrared light emitted by directed plasma arc. Total processing time varies in millisecond to second range, not exceeding 10s, thus avoiding any damage to the underneath low-temperature substrates such as Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) or Polyethylene naphthalate (PEN) substrates.
In one of our recent works, we used this technique to achieve high-quality TiO2 compact layers on PET substrates. Usually TiO2 film requires high-temperature (450-500 C) annealing, not compatible with PET/PEN or other plastic substrates. Here, we exposed TiO2 films on ITO-coated PET substrates to 5-10 high-intensity pulses with total processing duration of 0.2-0.5s.