In the last 15¿20 years, pulsed laser deposition (PLD) has emerged as one of the most popular and intrinsically simple techniques for depositing a wide range of the most exciting materials being explored for next generation applications. Such sustained popularity is due to the inherent versatility, flexibility, and speed of a process that can be applied to essentially any material, from simple metals, through binary compounds, to multi-component high-quality single crystals. Pulsed laser deposition had several characteristics that made it remarkably competitive in the complex thin-film research arena as compared to other film growth techniques. These principle attractive features were stoichiometric transfer, and simplicity in initial setup and in the investigation of arbitratry compounds. One could rapidly investigate thin-film deposition of nearly any compound regardless of the complexity of the crystal chemistry.