Directed Vapor Deposition: Designed from the Start to Expand Your Coating Options

The need for high-performance coatings in recent years has grown considerably as the need to compensate for the limitations of commonly available bulk materials has become more insistent. Directed vapor deposition is the only system capable of meeting highly demanding requirements for coating composition and morphology, while reducing overall costs.

The advantages that directed vapor deposition offers over existing technology include:

Economical Process. In conventional physical vapor deposition systems, the flux generated by the electron-beam gun expands as it moves away from the source. As a result, virtually all the vaporized material condenses on the walls of the vacuum chamber and not on the component to be coated. With directed vapor deposition, the supersonic gas jet can be used to tailor the spread of the vapor flux to the size of the substrate. This translates into highly efficient use of materials and deposition rates that can be 15 times as high as physical vapor deposition.

Non-Line-of-Sight Deposition. When moderate chamber pressures are employed, the gas jet can carry the vapor across regions of the substrate that are not facing the evaporation source. This effect is impossible to duplicate in a single pass using conventional vapor deposition technologies.

Superior Control of Composition and Morphology. By incorporating multisource evaporation and hollow cathode plasma activation, the composition and morphology of a coating can be controlled. This means that dense crystalline coatings can be deposited that incorporate multiple layers of different materials as well as compositions and morphologies that are graduated across a surface.