Marcus Klein, SURAGUS GmbH, Dresden, Germany
This presentation summarizes latest global technology trends, new data processing concepts and assesses their potentials for thin-film deposition and monitoring equipment in general. Technology roadmaps of Gartner and McKinsey predict massive changes in industrial data generation and data processing strategies. Intelligent, smart, autonomous and AI driven hardware components process data at various levels applying edge, mesh and quantum computing strategies. Widely extended amounts of data processed to additional information are expected to change process control and monitoring strategies. Information is generated by a variety of physical and virtual sensors. Enormous amounts of data at different varieties is handled at high velocities containing information at different levels of veracity with hidden value. Data from manufacturing is processed subsequently at edge, fog and cloud level and then connected to product-lifecycle-management-tools catering digital twin and digital thread concepts. This presentation extracts concepts and implication from those trends for deposition and monitoring equipment. It depicts already available elements and suggests new required developments to cater the above goals. Specific examples are depicted based on non-contact eddy current inline imaging strategies by use of inline sensor arrays for inline imaging of material properties and defect density.