a thin film 24 of electrically conductive material deposited on one surface thereof energy from a pulsed laser 26 coupled to a suitable laser control 29 is focused through substrate 22 onto film 24 on a axis 28 which is substantially normal to the film substrate interface 30 that portion of film 24 which is illuminated by laser 26 is rapidly heated and vaporized by the laser energy deposited therein the resulting vapor cloud 32 34 explodes 34 preferentially along axis 28 on a uniform substantially cylindrical vapor front assuming a circular laser beam across a gap 34 onto the target surface 36 of an opposing substrate 38 where the exploded film plasma is vapordeposited as at 40 as noted above film 24 is of electrically conductive material including both conductors and semiconductors having carrier concentrations in excess of about 10 17 cm 3 aluminum gold and nickel are examples of suitable metallic conductors and impurity doped silicon and germanium are examples of suitable semiconductors the thickness of film 24 is coordinated with the intensity and duration of the pulsed output of laser 26 focused thereon to obtain rapid and complete vaporization of the film material more specifically thickness of film 24 is chosen to be approximately equal to the thermal diffusion depth l expressed by equation 7 see equation appendix where k is the thermal conductivity of the film material c v is the specific heat per unit mass rho 1 is the density of the film material and t p is the laser pulse duration in general pressure at vaporization increases with intensity and film thickness laser energy is deposited by classical skin depth absorption and foil thickness should be at least equal to skin depth for a given laser energy and foil material.