Directed Vapor Deposition: A Leap Forward in High-Performance Coatings

For many years, vapor deposited coatings have been incorporated in products to provide functionality that could not be achieved otherwise. Sometimes these coatings act as a barrier, providing protection from the environment or surface wear resistance. In other instances, they are active components in an engineered system, converting the sun’s energy to electricity or storing bits of computer information in magnetic domains.

In many cases, it is only through the use of a coating that engineers can meet their performance specifications, yet applying coatings can be costly. Directed vapor deposition dramatically reduces the trade-off between performance and cost and opens the way to cost-effective production of more sophisticated coatings.

Many applications have already been investigated. These include: