Physical vapor deposition (PVD) describes a variety of vacuum deposition methods used to deposit thin films by the condensation of a vaporized form of the desired film material onto various workpiece surfaces (e.g., ontosemiconductor wafers).
The coating method involves purely physical processes such as high-temperature vacuum evaporation with subsequent condensation, or plasma sputter bombardment rather than involving a chemical reaction at the surface to be coated as in chemical vapor deposition.
Source: Wikipedia
