Lara Maroto-Diaz, Joseph Brindley,Patrick McCarthy, Dermot Monaghan, Gencoa Ltd, Liverpool, United Kingdom
Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD) is a coating process that is well known to be environmentally friendly. Compared with other thin film coating processes it does not create chemical harmful waste or harmful emissions that pollutes air and water. However, there are other factors that make PVD not as sustainable as it looks at first sight. For example: high energy consumption, inefficient use of resources, material and samples waste. So, what can we do to make PVD more sustainable?
PVD energy consumption mainly comes from cooling, pumping and heating stages during the coating process. The aim of much research is to find ways to avoid heating of substrates and chambers, and to reduce coating time via improved surface engineering. This talk will focus on the tools that are available to reduce pumping time and make processes more efficient - which also entails a cost reduction.
For material waste, better target use and more efficient sputtering makes a positive impact on cost reduction and helps with certain global material shortages. Having a deep understanding of the magnetic design of the magnetron source will have a significant impact on these matters.
Another factor that is often not considered is the extra energy use that comes from failed runs that result in substrate and coating waste. These are commonly caused by contamination that results in coating defects and therefore production scrappage. In this case we can prevent it from two different approaches: choosing the correct deposition technology for the application and monitoring the vacuum conditions during production to detect potential problems beforehand or track past failures and learn from them. Different magnetron technology will be presented and sensors and devices for monitor and control.
In this talk, a variety of products and technologies are going to be presented to explore how can PVD be more sustainable, more efficient and therefore also get a reduction in production costs.