50th Anniversary Technical Conference Presentation The SVC and 50 Years of Advances in Vacuum Coating Technology

摘要

For 50 years the Society of Vacuum Coaters (SVC) has provided a forum for information exchange and education in the field of vacuum coating. The story of the SVC is intimately connected with the development of various vacuum coating technologies and equipment developed to enhance production and boost a reasonable return on investment. In 1957 the principal coating systems were bell jars and the primary deposition process was filament evaporation. Deposition materials were limited to those with low vaporization temperatures (Al, Ag, Au, Zn, etc).Today we have large in-line deposition systems that can coat 10-f t x 12-ft pieces of glass with multiple layers at a production rate of two per minute. We have large web coaters that use multiple sputtering sources. Now we have e-beam evaporation capability that can be used to deposit refractory materials and vaporize materials at very high rates for strip coating. There are various types of magnetron sputtering techniques, plasma-enhanced chemical vaporization processes, and arc vapor deposition as well as reactive deposition techniques that allow the deposition of nitrides, oxides, and carbides.The capability to tailor film properties by bombardment with energetic atomic-sized particles has developed significantly, and some of the new vaporization techniques provide high fractions of metallic ions (film ions) in the condensing species. The application of vacuum coating has spread from simple metallization and optical coating "stacks' in 1957 to multilayer optical coatings, tool coatings, energy conservation coatings, sensors, surface engineering, and "smart coatings." Understanding and controlling sub-atmospheric and atmospheric plasma environments have become important to many deposition processes. Process control has become a major concern as the requirements on coatings become more demanding. These changes are reflected in the activities of the SVC and require a continuously changing technical and educational program. SVC has always kept pace and provided a medium for conveying cutting-edge technologies. We look forward to another half-century of SVC involvement.