Carlos Guerra1, Frank Papa2
1Swiss Cluster AG, Spiez, Switzerland
2GP Plasma Inc, Tucson, AZ
Swiss Cluster’s SC-1 flagship thin film deposition equipment empowers coating developers to create news materials through the combinatory deposition of films with both Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) and Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD) techniques in one tool. This combination of ALD+PVD provides countless possibilities to push materials development boundaries. The SC-1 can fabricate complex coatings with hundreds of nanolayers from the ALD and PVD materials library. The properties of such multi-nanolayered coatings are strongly influenced by their interfaces. Carefully engineered coatings translate to lighter and cheaper materials with improved mechanical and thermal properties. We will show examples of multi-nanolayered coatings, such as a 200 nanolayered metal-ceramic coating with improved hardness and yield strength. The SC-1 system offers the capabilities of thermal and plasma enhanced ALD as well as Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD), High Power Impulse Magnetron Sputtering (HIPIMS) and thermal evaporation for PVD processes. In addition, we offer in-situ Time of Flight Sims (Tof-SIMS) and Optical Emission Spectroscopy (OES). With our SC-1 platform and other modular/scalable deposition systems, we are accelerating the path to new materials development with a speed never before possible.