Transport in Thin Metallic Films

The term thin film, widely used in-today's science and technology, can be defined as a layer of gaseous, liquid or solid matter. In other words, one can say that it is a form of matter in which one of the dimensions is extremely small as compared two.Usually solid material films less than a micron in thickness are classified as thin films.Thin films have been the subject of curiosity and investigations since 17th century.Thin solid films were first fabricated through electrolysis more than one hundred years ago. Thin solid films were first employed as coatings of precious metals and later found wide applications, for corrosion protection. However, the usefulness of electronic and optical properties of thin films for industry has been realized largely in last few decades only. This associated with scientific curiosity about the behaviour of two dimensional solids, have been responsible for the growth of exploding interest in the study of science and technology of the thin films.