Thermal laser epitaxy (TLE) is a physical vapor deposition technique that utilizes irradiation from continuous-wave lasers to heat sources locally  for growing films on a substrate. This technique can be performed under ultra-high vacuum pressure or in the presence of a background atmosphere, such as ozone, to deposit oxide films.
TLE operates at power densities between 10 &ndash; 10 W/cm, which results in evaporation or sublimation of the source material, with no plasma or high-energy particle species being produced. Despite operating at comparatively low power densities, TLE is capable of depositing many materials with low vapor pressures, including  refractory metals, a process that is challenging to perform with molecular beam epitaxy.