Plasma showing during operation
The thin-film coating team at Torr Scientific proudly welcomes their new reactive dual-sputter coating system, which has just been installed and commissioned by Moorfield Nanotechnology Ltd.
Torr’s managing Director David Bates says “This latest investment in a new coating system will greatly advance our coating capabilities”.
Torr’s company scientist Dr David Stupple says “This new machine gives Torr the capability to use reactive sputtering which increases the number and types of coating materials that we can offer to our customers“.
Reactive sputtering involves introducing a reactive gas along with inert argon to form a plasma.
The reactive gas becomes activated and chemically combines with the atoms that are sputtered from the target to form a new compound.
Reactive sputtering is therefore a combined physical, electrical, and chemical process. Generally, the amount of reactive gas used is small compared to that of the inert gas, but you can control the stoichiometry of the coating by varying the ratios. By doing this films ranging in properties from almost a metal to a semiconductor, insulator, or resistor can be produced.
Two widely used reactive gases are oxygen (producing oxides of metals) and nitrogen (producing nitrides of various elements).
Reactive sputtering has become a valuable commercial process for depositing dielectrics, resistors, and semiconductors.
For all enquiries or to discuss technical details in more depth please contact sales@torrscientific.co.uk
