Evaporation

First of all you need a reactor under vacuum, approximately 10-8 mBar, a power supply 10kV DC.
Sometimes a customer asks for an oxide, i.e. TiO2 – SiO2 etc.
Therefore an inlet for oxygen is presently installed. (D02)

Operation.

An electron beam is a stream of electrons, which flows from a cathode emitter (tungsten filament) to a material X into a source or crucible.
The kinetic energy of this stream of charged particles will randomly heat the source when they strike the surface.
With this energy any material can be melted and evaporated.
Evaporated material rises to the substrate, which is mounted
on a substrate holder, where it condensates on the substrate.

The distance between crucible and substrate holder, is approximately 40cm.
The deposition rate is about 0.1 – 10Å/sec.

Depending on customer’s needs, it is possible to evaporate perpendicular or rotating above the crucible.

Depositions are possible on any material, up to 400mm in diameter, i.e. metal, glass, Si, ceramic or polymer materials.
The reactor has 3 sources.
The use of multiple sources allows the simultaneous evaporation of different materials, resulting in films of binary or ternary composition (alloys).
Multi-layer structures can be produced by sequential evaporation.
The thickness of the layers may vary from a monolayer thickness to some microns.

The temperature in the reactor is between 20^oC and 40^oC, depending on the time needed to get a certain thickness.

Backfilling with N₂.