This book covers various aspects of lasers in materials science, including a comprehensive overview on basic principles of laser-materials interactions and applications enabled by pulsed laser systems. The material is organized in a coherent way, providing the reader with a harmonic architecture.
While systematically covering the major current and emerging areas of lasers processing applications, the Volume provides examples of targeted modification of material properties achieved through careful control of the processing conditions and laser irradiation parameters. Special emphasis is placed on specific strategies aimed at nanoscale control of material structure and properties to match the stringent requirements of modern applications. Laser fabrication of novel nanomaterials, which expands to the domains of photonics, photovoltaics, sensing, and biomedical applications, is also discussed in the Volume. This book assembles chapters based on lectures delivered at the Venice International School on Lasers in Materials Science which was held in Isola di San Servolo, Venice, Italy, in July, 2012.

Laser Physics for Materials Scientists: A Primer.- Material Response to Laser Energy Deposition (Thermal and Hyper thermal Processes).- Non-Thermal Material Response to Laser Energy Deposition.- Atomic Movies of Laser-Induced Structural and Phase Transformations from Molecular Dynamics Simulations.- Continuum Models of Ultra short Laser ¿Matter Interaction in Application to Wide-Bandgap.- Attosecond Pulses for Atomic and Molecular Physics.- Laser Interactions for the Synthesis and In-situ Diagnostics of Nano materials.- Laser-Mediated Nano particle Synthesis and Self-Assembling.- Nano-Cluster Assembled Films, Produced by Pulsed Laser Deposition, for Catalysis and the Photocatalysis.- Multifunctional Oxides Obtained by PLD: Applications as Ferroelectric and Piezoelectric Materials.- Biomaterial Thin Films by Soft Pulsed Laser Technologies for Biomedical Applications.- MAPLE and MALDI: Theory and Experiments.- Laser Nanofabrication of Soft Industrial Applications of Laser-Material Interactions for Coating.- Ultrafast Laser Micro- and Nano-Processing of Glasses.