Deposition of high melting point (refractory) metals like Niobium, Tungsten, Rhenium, Tantalum or Molybdenum can be a complicate task to be accomplished with e-beam evaporators. The little melting temperature difference between the crucible and the contained evaporation material can lead to various kind of problems and defects like:
- overheating of the crucible and whole evaporator
- contamination of the deposited layer due to crucible material incorporation into the deposition material
- need to use expensive (lower melting point) precursor materials instead of pure metals
- need to water cool the crucible and eventually insulate the cooling system from high voltage
- inability to deposit metal alloys due to non congruent evaporation
- film growth speed instability and need for closed-loop power control (quartz balance)
- deposition of rough, non compact films
Sputtering may solve some of the above issues but is not suitable when directional (line of sight) evaporation is required.
Ionized Jet Deposition (IJD) overcomes all these limitations and is the ideal solution for directional deposition of refractory metals (and any metal in general). In fact due to its ultra-fast high power pulsed ablation process IJD allows the congruent evaporation of a few micron deep region of the target surface avoiding all the above issues. With IJD stable and reproducible deposition processes can be achieved with no contamination, low heat generation, no need for water cooling, high deposition rate and efficient material use.
IJD can be mounted in any orientation. Using a reactive working gas (typically oxygen and nitrogen) under proper partial pressure, coatings of different chemical composition than that of the target material can be deposited.
For more information on this process contact your local distributor or write to info@noivion.com
IJD directional deposition