Method of forming film upon a substrate

A method of forming a film upon a substrate by means of a laser evaporation method wherein a laser beam is shined upon a target placed within an evacuated deposition chamber, so that target material in a portion of the target surface irradiated by said laser beam evaporates, and said evaporated target material is deposited upon a surface of the substrate supported by a substrate holder within said deposition chamber, said method of forming the film upon the substrate comprising:

• in a preliminary step, obtaining in advance information on a distribution of a thickness of a film deposited upon a test substrate prepared for use in collecting information over a fixed irradiation time while shining said laser beam upon said target in the state in which there is a fixed positional relationship between the spatial positions of said test substrate and a point of incidence of said laser beam upon said target, or while shining said laser beam upon said target while rotating said test substrate, and then;
• in a main step, adjusting a deposition time at each relative positional relationship based on the film-thickness distribution information obtained in advance in the preliminary step while spatially moving or rotating the substrate or substrate holder about a specific central axis of rotation relative to the point of incidence of said laser beam to said target, or while performing both said relative rotation and said relative movement, and solving an inverse problem using a uniform or a desired film-thickness distribution and the film-thickness distribution information obtained in advance at each relative position, to thereby determine the deposition time at each relative position.