New high-rate automated deposition system for the manufacture of complex multilayer coatings - I. System description

Abstract

There is a need for complex thin film coatings to meet the requirements of advanced applications in different fields such as telecommunications and displays. While it has not always been possible to achieve the desired filter specifications, over the past few years recent advances in design techniques, deposition equipment and optical monitoring have allowed more complex coatings to be designed and fabricated. One example of this is a fully automated deposition system that can accurately fabricate complex coatings.1,2 This system, based on rf-magnetron sputtering, has been previously used to fabricate a wide variety of filters of varying complexities including passband filters, edge filters, broad-band antireflectance coatings, low-reflectance metal/dielectric filters and so forth. However, this system had several disadvantages including low deposition rates (< 0.1 nm/sec) and limited thickness uniformity. In this paper we will describe a new automated deposition system (ADS) that has relatively high deposition rates and a good thickness uniformity. The thickness process control will be discussed and several examples of deposited filters will be given.