thin film
noun
a film of material only a few microns thick, deposited on a substrate, as in the technology for making integrated circuits.
thin film
Americannoun
thin-film
British
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of thin film
First recorded in 1955–60
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
They engineered a hafnium-based thin film that switches states through a more controlled mechanism.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 23, 2026
Researchers think the faster breakdown in mixed samples may happen because a thin film forms where ice touches minerals.
From Science Daily ● Feb. 25, 2026
To test this effect, the team built a solar cell using a thin film of P3TTM.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 15, 2025
The team then stacked the Fe-Ga thin film atop an Si substrate with the optimum thickness ratio.
From Science Daily ● May 13, 2024
Sure enough, in the thin film of dust that had settled over it were dog tracks.
From "Old Yeller" by Fred Gipson
The company has been dogged by concerns over a lack of clarity into its operations, including its progress on building an operational foundry in Arizona to manufacture thin-film lithium niobate chips for quantum systems.
From Barron's ● May 11, 2026
The Chinese thin-film deposition equipment provider is poised to benefit from a strong memory expansion upcycle, the analysts say.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 29, 2026
Quantum Computing sees its thin-film lithium niobate chip foundry, which produces materials used in telecom hardware and photonic chips that power certain types of quantum systems, as a way to stand out from peers.
From Barron's ● Mar. 2, 2026
This approach offers unparalleled sensitivity with a light yield approximately double that of commercially available BC-400 plastic thin-film scintillators and ten times greater than conventional bulk scintillators such as LYSO:Ce, BGO and YAG:Ce crystals.
From Science Daily ● Feb. 1, 2024
To develop the thin-film material, the team studied three membranes with different combinations of the metal-organic frameworks using a new cryogenic imaging technique.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 16, 2023
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
