Thin Film Deposition Services – Things to Know

Thin-film Deposition 

Thin film deposition is the technique of applying a thin layer of material or coating on a surface to form layers to develop filters, create reflective surfaces, increase insulation and conduction for the protection.  An example of thin-film deposition is a mirror where a thin layer of aluminum coating is applied on a sheet of glass in order to make the surface reflective. Thin-film deposition services are at the heart of the semiconductor industries, optical devices industries, compact disk manufacturers, solar panels industries and glass industries. 

The companies that provide thin film deposition services offer a variety of thin-film deposition systems including thermal evaporators, PLD (pulsed laser deposition) systems, electron beam evaporators, TCVD (thermal chemical vapor deposition) systems and more.

There are two methods of thin film deposition: chemical & physical. The method of deposition depends on the purpose of the deposition, thickness desired and material of the surface and the substrate. Manufacturers seeking to apply thin films should consult with the experts to understand the process and methods of thin film deposition. This will help him to choose the best method and system for their industries under expert guidance.

Let’s get the basic understanding of chemical thin film deposition and physical thin film deposition methods.

Chemical Deposition

In the chemical deposition method, a substrate is fully submerged in a volatile chemical fluid that produces a chemical change on a surface to deposit coating. In this method, every surface of the substrate is equally coated with the substance material. Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is one of the highest-performance examples of chemical deposition methods.

Physical Deposition

This method does not include any kind of chemical reaction; it involves a wide range of technologies including thermodynamic, mechanical or electromechanical processes. In this method to produce a thin film on the substrate, a material is released from a source in a low-pressure environment for accurate results. Thermal evaporation and sputtering are the two most common techniques used in the physical vapor deposition (PVD) method.

According to the requirement of the manufacturer, a host variety of coating options available including metals coating, oxides coating, diamond coating, transparent conductors, insulators and more. If you are a manufacturer and seeking to apply thin films as per your industry standards, you should have well aware of the substance material is being used in your manufacturing plant. You should search and consult with some reputed company involved in thin film deposition services for expert consultation and guidance before choosing the best deposition method and coating type for your industry. 

How Does an Electron Beam Evaporator System Works?

Electron Beam Evaporator System

Electron beam evaporation is a type of physical vapor deposition in which the target material is used as a coating and bombarded with an electron beam from a charged tungsten filament to evaporate and convert it to a gaseous state for deposition on the material to be coated. The electron beam causes atoms from the target material to transform into the gaseous phase.

The materials to be applied with thermal evaporation techniques can be pure atomic elements or can be molecules like oxides and nitrides. The object to be coated is referred to as the substrate and can be in any wide variety of things like in semiconductor wafers, solar cells, optical components or in other possibilities.

Difficulties of direct evaporation to form oxides, nitrides, fluorides, carbides are due to fragmentation of vaporized compounds that can overcome many of these problems. Here metals are evaporated in the presence of reactive gas with a typical reactive evaporation system. The problem here is that most oxides are substoichiometric due to the low energy of the evaporated adatoms due to which deposition rate can suffer.

Evaporation is one of the first processes used extensively for the deposition of thin films and in the process enabled to use of thin films in a wide variety of applications that lowered manufacturing costs and expanded the functionality of bulk materials. Evaporation and related processes are still used extensively to synthesize a wide variety of thin coating.

E beam evaporation is used to deposit a wide variety of materials used for optical thin film applications as laser optics and solar panels to eyeglasses and architectural glass to provide the optical, electrical and mechanical qualities required. It provides high material utilization efficiency as compared to other processes and reduces costs.

Some evaporation systems are delivered with programmable sweep controllers to provide optimal heating of the evaporation materials and minimized contamination from a crucible. Multi-pocket e beam sources can be provided to sequentially evaporate different evaporation materials without breaking vacuum for multilayer film designs. Some systems are configured in a way that is controlled for automated single and multilayer process control.

E – Evaporation the system is controllable, repeatable and compatible with the use of an ion source to enhance the desired thin film offering a better configuration for R and D production, targeting high volume with certain types of applications.

Electron beam evaporator system is better than resistive thermal evaporation which is better than heating materials to much better temperatures which is better for resistive or crucible heater. This allows for very high deposition rates and evaporation of high-temperature materials that can better maintain the purity of the source material. Water cooling also tightly confine the electron beam heating to only the area occupied by the source material, eliminating any unwanted contamination from neighboring components.

E beam evaporation is also available on a number of PVD platforms and in many applications including metallization, dielectric coating, optical coatings, and Josephson junctions