Guest post provided by Denton Vacuum, LLC. Denton Vacuum manufactures machines that employ precision methods like e-beam evaporation for diamond-like film quality. Visit www.dentonvacuum.com for more information.
E-beam evaporation, a useful method for applying thin and durable coatings, is commonly compared to thermal evaporation. However, e-beam has some advantage that thermal evaporation can’t offer. The commonalities of e-beam evaporation and thermal evaporation are that both methods require the source material to be heated above its boiling/sublimation temperature. In each process, the coating material is turned into a gas and then evaporated, while eventually condensing onto a surface creating a film.
The edge that e-beam evaporation has over thermal evaporation is that it is possible to add a significantly larger amount of energy into the source material. This makes the quality of the film deposited have a higher density with increased adhesive properties. Substances that endure an unusually large amount of heat or pressure need a more durable coating for protection. To ensure less contamination of the source material, ion-beam deposition only heats the source material as opposed to the whole chamber. These vacuums are much more durable than thermal evaporation machines as a higher variety of materials can be introduced
E-beam works by applying a large voltage to the filament as concentrated electron beam can be focused on the source material. This beam can be directed by several bending magnets. The beam is sent across the entire material to heat it to very high temperatures, creating a film deposit. E-beam machines can use this process on a number of instruments including the electron microscope, and other powerful precision viewing instruments. This diamond like film is crucial in studies that require observation of very light and energy sensitive specimens, specimens that are easily charged and ionized. This process is similar to the vacuum metalizing process, which deposits a metal film on other glass, plastic, metal, ceramic and paper materials.