New Developments for the Continuous High Rate Production of Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD) Flake Pigments Without Use of Consumable Substrates

摘要

A growing demand for thin Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD)-flakes of metal, dielectrics, and combinations thereof, may require the elimination of the classical method of using a release-lacquered PET film as a consumable substrate.rnThis paper describes new methods based on the use of non-consumable closed-loop metallic substrates. This new process consists of a sequential evaporation of a soluble organic release material, followed by the product layers and stripping the product in flake form. Process variations allow accumulating layers of release and product material and stripping them in situ as a package, either by dissolving or melting the release layers.rnIn a variation of this new process, cryogenic methods are applied which remove the multi-layers by making the evaporated organic release layers brittle and by breaking them from the substrate.rnYet another variation of this new process operates without the use of any release material. It is based on the evaporation of the product material, especially non-alloying oxides or fluorides, directly onto a fast-moving surface of liquid tin, followed by a separation of the broken-up solid film from the recycled liquid metal.