Objective
A large second hand air-to-air coating line has been fully modernised in order to be used for the oxide coatings in large-scale production and in mass production of, for example, EMI shielding coatings. Test coatings were planned not only to demonstrate the process capability but also to be tested in new industrial applications. The concept developed during the project was planned to give the core group the possibility to open a new business line in the equipment modernisation.
The magnetron modernisation has been successfully completed and demonstrated by the high quality TiN coatings produced for different industrial applications.
The improved target design has been shown to allow increased sputtering rate with a reduced risk of target cracking and de bonding, thus, improving the process economy.
Three prototypes of the pulsed dc power supplies have been produced and partly tested during the project. This has been the most difficult task but the solutions developed during the project seem to lead to power supply solutions having superior properties compared to those already on the markets.
A very extensive small-scale test-coating programme has been carried out and the results have shown the importance of the goals set for the equipment development. Furthermore, good results have been achieved in the coating development for different applications. Likewise, the small-scale coating tests have provided the data, which has made up scaling using the computer simulations possible.
The coatings have been analysed using the modern techniques including the atomic force microscopy (AFM) and nanoindentation techniques. These analyses have served for the optimisation of the coating processes and coatings.
The process simulations have shown to be very useful means for the process development and up scaling. The process simulation work performed in this project has made possible to start production with the large area coating equipment without an expensive and time consuming development period.
In this project an economic reactive pulsed d.c. magnetron sputtering process for depositing insulating oxides will be developed. To achieve this, for the first time, ail the different components: magnetrons, target design and target bonding, gas supply and control, enhanced d.c. pulsed power supplies, and overall process control will be optimised for solving the problems involved in depositing insulating oxide coatings. Computer simulations will be Utilised for upscaling the achieved results for industrial size large area coating applications. The partners in the core group have found a wide range of new and innovative applications, partly patented by them, which are hampering from the technical limitations of the present day technology, thus, the main objective of this project is to solve these technical limitations of the process and utilise fully the clear advantages of the magnetron sputtering technology in the applications developed by the partners. The economical effects of solving the above mentioned problems will be utilised by the industry far wider than the partners them self, because, the main benefits will be gained by the endusers of the coatings. However, for the core group representing coating equipment builders, component builders, process developers and job coaters the prospects for economical benefits are good when the scientific and technical problems addressed in this project have been solved. The core group foresees additional benefits in learning a joint strategy for being able to work together as a group for performing modernisation of old large area coating equipments and building new ones for the export markets. This project also strongly promotes the scientific and technological cooperation between the new and old member states. Because clear market expections are available the developed coatings will immediately be tested in different applications in cooperation with the endusers.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesopticsmicroscopy
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuelsfossil energynatural gas
- natural scienceschemical sciencesinorganic chemistrypost-transition metals
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringcoating and films
- natural sciencesmathematicsapplied mathematicsmathematical model
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Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CRS - Cooperative research contractsCoordinator
50100 Mikkelii
Finland