ICMCTF2007 Session B2-2: Arc and E-Beam Coatings and Technologies

Tuesday, April 24, 2007 8:00 AM in Room Royal Palm 1-3

Tuesday Morning

Start	Invited?	Item
8:00 AM	Invited	B2-2-1 Large Area Filtered Plasma Deposition Technology and its Applications. V. Gorokhovsky (Arcomac Surface Engineering, LLC) Filtered arc process provides a fully atomized and near 100% ionized metal-gaseous vapor plasma, which makes it favorable for a variety of plasma immersion surface engineering processes, such as PVD and PECVD coatings, low energy ion implantation, ion etching and ion diffusion saturation (ion nitriding, carburizing etc.). In such processes the coatings are depositing from particulate flows having a high ion-to-neutral ratio. Recently developed hybrid plasma surface engineering technology utilizes several conventional PVD and low pressure CVD processes combined with large area filter arc deposition (LAFAD) process, which allows depositing a wide variety of elemental compositions generated from different vapor plasma sources. Additionally this technology provides a high rate of ion bombardment assistance both during coating deposition and substrate conditioning processes. The scaleup capability of this process is capable of supporting virtually any size of industrial vacuum surface engineering equipment. The unidirectional design of LAFAD dual arc plasma sources allows for integration into a variety of vacuum processing equipment layouts. The wide range of applications ranging from die casting dies, cutting and forming tools, dental and medical instruments, high load high stress aircraft components to SOFC components operating at high temperatures in chemically aggressive environments will be presented. The coating and plasma parameters characterization will be discussed in relation to different process designs and applications.
8:40 AM		B2-2-3 Types of Cathodic Vacuum Arc Sources and its Application Potential J. Vetter (Sulzer Metaplas Ionon, Germany); O. Zimmer, V. Weihnacht, H.J. Scheibe (Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology, Germany) Cathodic vacuum arc evaporation (CVAE) is in industrial use since about 25 years. In particular the deposition of hard coatings for tools and machine parts is a typical application for this technology. Newer applications are decorative coatings for galvanized plastics or other substrates and the deposition of hard carbon coatings for hard disc applications. The different applications require different growth conditions to get the coating quality and to realize a sufficient productivity. These requirements can only be full filled by using optimized arc sources. High rate processes for machine elements and high precision processes for microelectronic processes demand different source concepts. Various types of evaporators were developed including standard circular and rectangular evaporators, high current arcs, pulsed arc discharges including laser arc, magnetic steered arc and electrical steered arcs. The different arc evaporation methods are based on different features of the arc discharge. The main principles are the use of external magnetic fields, anode effects or strong own magnet fields. Besides the different arc evaporators also various filter systems were developed during the last decades. The different arc evaporators and filter systems are more or less industrial used. In the paper recent developments in the area of arc evaporators, plasma filters, pulsed discharges are discussed under the aspect of there technical physics and industrial application potential. Investigations of the influence of magnetic fields with plasma species and reactive gas are presented. Particular special aspects of the technical physics like anode geometries, electrical connections and discharge current characteristics are discussed.
9:00 AM		B2-2-4 Large Area Vacuum Arc Deposition by Multi-Source Flux Mixing D.M. Lipkin, S.A. Weaver, W.T. Carter, R. DiDomizio (GE Global Research) A simple flux-mixing model is shown to accurately describe the mass distribution of vacuum arc deposits onto large-area substrates. Examples are presented of co-deposition from multiple sources having (1) identical compositions, (2) variation in minor alloying elements, and (3) variation in major-element composition. Implications for the design of deposition chambers and coating processes are discussed.