VACUUM COATING APPLICATIONS

PVD (physical vapor deposition) are sputtering and evaporation processes where materials like aluminum or hard alloys go from a condensed phase to a vapor phase and then condense as a thin film on the object to coat. Coating of materials by use of PVD processes are used in many diverse industries and applications including:

• Hard coating of cutting tooling, milling tooling, drilling tooling, moulding tooling, engine parts and bearings.
• Decorative coating provides a metallic effect on plastics in automobile industry, household appliances, writing tools, electronics industry and toy industry.
• Optical coating of lenses, optics, glasses, touch screens and mirrors.
• Wear-resistant coating coating of medical device like implants, pacemakers and surgical instruments.
• Metallization coating of crystalline silicon solar cells and wear-resistant coating of solar cell glass.
• Metallization coating of packaging material.

In metal deposition applications the sputtering process often results in particulate contamination of the vacuum process chamber and surrounding equipment. Such particulates will damage vacuum gauges which impacts measurement performance or reduces the life-time of the gauges.