Advanced Coating Capabilities

Advanced coating capabilities

• Ten magnetron sputtering chambers
• One ion-beam sputter chamber
• Reactive sputtering, plasma etch and ion polishing
• Single layer or multilayer thin film coatings, up to 8 materials in a single run
• Single or multiple coating designs on the same substrate
• Uniform coatings to a precision of < 0.1% in thickness variation
• Depth graded, lateral graded or symmetrically graded coatings with precision to 0.2%
• Adhesion layers and capping layers

RIT has in-house design capability for nearly all coatings. Materials options include single films or multilayer films of pure or reactively sputtered W, Ni, Ti, V, Cr, Sc, Mo, Ta, La, Ru, Fe, Pt, Rh, Au, Ag, MoS₂, Al₂O₃, Si, C, B₄C, SiC, SiO₂, and practically any other material that can be sputtered or reactively sputtered. Up to eight different materials can be coated in a single coating run.

Substrates can be any vacuum compatible material with physical dimensions of

• Length from 3 mm up to 1500 mm
• Width up to 750 mm
• Diameter up to 750 mm
• Shapes include flat, parabolic, elliptical, spherical, aspherical or toroidal

Characterization

RIT uses a suite of in-house metrology tools including X-ray reflectometry, X-ray spectroscopy, optical interferometry, atomic force microscopy, UV/VIS reflectometry, and optical microscopy.

Successful developments

• High reflectivity optical coatings from various materials for a broad range of wavelengths
• MoS₂ coating as a solid lubricant, licensed for manufacture
• Various B₄C based coatings for tool coatings, licensed for manufacture
• Mo-based film for hydrogen fuel cell development
• Waveguide and supermirror coatings for neutron analyses
• Various optical coatings for X-ray applications including:
• Spectroscopy analyzers
• Diffraction monochromators and analyzers
• Focusing optics
• Collimating optics
• Multilayers as double multilayer monochromator (DMM) sets, offering high flux and a broad  range of energy selectivity
• Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUVL) collectors, illumination, imaging and metrology optics
• Extreme Ultraviolet or EUV-XUL for precision diffractive optics for multidisciplinary studies and astronomical research

Two different coatings on a substrate

Precision coating on a complex shape