Preface to the Special Issue for the High Power Impulse/Pulsed Magnetron Sputtering

High Power Impulse/Pulsed Magnetron Sputtering (HiPIMS/HPPMS) process has several interesting aspects and is vigorously studied in recent years. In this preface, some trends in HiPIMS research are briefly reviewed: 1) the applicability of HiPIMS to practical deposition processes, 2) the behavior of the transient and high density plasma, and 3) the application of HiPIMS to the reactive sputtering. By this, the author tried to help the readers to overview this field, and to locate the importance of the contributions to this special issue.