Enhancement of material ablation and photoacoustic excitation by an artificially deposited liquid film in the process of pulsed-laser ablation (PLA) is investigated in this paper. Ablation threshold, ablation rate, surface topography, and acoustic-transient emission are also measured for dry and liquid film-coated surfaces. The physical mechanisms of enhanced ablation in the liquid-assisted process are analyzed at relatively low laser fluences with negligible effect of laser-produced plasma. Particularly, correlation between material ablation and acoustic-transient generation is examined. In the experiment, aluminum thin-films and bulk foils are ablated by Q-switched Nd:YAG laser pulses. The dependence of ablation rate and laser-induced topography on liquid film thickness and chemical composition is also examined. Photoacoustic emission is measured by the probe beam deflection method utilizing a CW HeNe laser and a microphone. In comparison with a dry ablation process, the liquid-assisted ablation process results in substantially augmented ablation efficiency and reduced ablation threshold. The results indicate that both increased laser-energy coupling, i.e., lowered reflectance, and amplified photoacoustic excitation in explosive vaporization of liquid are responsible for the enhanced material ablation. (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier B.V.