Resistance Monitor and Control for Vacuum Evaporation of Metals and Carbon

Abstract

We have designed and built an electronic device which compares the resistance of a defined area of vacuum evaporated material with a variable resistor. When the two resistances are matched, the device automatically disconnects the primary side of the substrate transformer and stops further evaporation.This approach to controlled evaporation in conjunction with the modified guns and evaporation source permits reliably reproducible multiple Pt shadow films from a single Pt wrapped carbon point source. The reproducibility from consecutive C point sources is also reliable. Furthermore, the device we have developed permits us to select a predetermined resistance so that low contrast high-resolution shadows, heavy high contrast shadows, or any grade in between can be selected at will. The reproducibility and quality of results are demonstrated in Figures 1-4 which represent evaporations at various settings of the variable resistor.