Combinatorial libraries are the key to rapid, cost-effective coating development. As coatings become more complex, the relationship between composition and properties becomes difficult to predict, slowing the development of advanced materials systems. The flexibility and control that are the distinctive qualities of directed vapor deposition allow engineers to take a combinatorial approach.

Multi-source directed vapor deposition allows researchers to tailor the lateral spread of deposition vapor for each source, achieving 0 to 100% compositional variation across a 100 mm wafer without masking. The use of binary or ternary alloy sources, in which each of the constituents have similar vapor pressure at the alloy melt temperature, enables this approach to be extended to six or more sources.

Taking advantage of this capability, researchers can create compositionally graded libraries and expose them to a variety of screening techniques, thus slashing the time and costs required to identify coatings with desirable characteristics.

An Electron Beam Method for Creating Combinatorial Libraries: Application to Next Generation Thermal Barrier Coatings Systems (pdf)