Cavitation can be defined as the formation, growth and implosion of vapor bubbles within a liquid. The shock wave produced at the moment of the collapse is responsible for the damage on nearby surfaces, such as ship propellers or hydraulic machinery. This phenomenon has been studied by several scientists due to the potentials applications that it offers in different disciplines. The most common techniques to generate cavitation bubbles under a controlled environment involve the use of pulsed lasers, electrical discharge or ultrasound probes. However, these methods are either too expensive or intrusive. In contrast, cavitation bubbles may also be produced with inexpensive, low-power continuous wave (CW) lasers, so long as they are focused in strongly absorbing liquids, this approach leads to the so called thermocavitation. In the present thesis, I propose to study again some of the physical mechanisms of thermocavitation reported by Rastopov and to explore feasible applications of the shock waves generated by the collapse of thermocavitation bubbles as a method to: • To produce damage in materials as hard as titanium and indium tin oxide thin films. This damage was in the form of micro-holes, which could be used for micrometric light sources or spatial filters. • For tissue ablation; mainly to pierce the stratum corneum and thus enhance transdermal drug delivery. • If the thermocavitation bubble is generated within a highly absorbing droplet, the shock wave that is produced upon the bubble collapse overcomes the droplet surface tension and a long and fast moving liquid jet is expelled through the liquid-air interface. Therefore, thermocavitation induced in absorbing droplets could lead to an alternative jet generator. In general, from an application point of view, this combination of CW laser and absorbing solution is in fact quite convenient because it would reduce the cost relative to other more sophisticated methods.