PVD-engineering

Procedure

PVD is a thin film deposition technique - Physical Vapor Deposition - defining a group of vacuum coating processes including evaporation (thermal, cathodic arc, laser, electron and ion beam), sputtering and ion plating.

hartec uses a multiple step plasma processing for metallization of plastics, metals and other substrate materials.

Prior to the deposition coating procedure, the substrate surface of a polymer is modified and activated by means of ion bombardment within a plasma atmosphere; for metal substrates an ion etching process is used with significantly higher energy. hartec uses own developed and patented circular wide beam plasma sources to supply energetic ions and create a high density plasma. The magnetic field support increases the coating rate as well as the plasma energy within the coating area. This energy favors reactions that lead to the formation of hard coatings and especially decorative layers. Other reactive gases containing nitrogen, carbon and oxygen are added to the plasma area forming metal-organic and inorganic compounds, also called metal-ceramics.

The deposition technology is based on the physical principle of cathode sputtering with magnetic field enhancement – Magnetron Sputtering - a patented development of hartec . Sputtering relies on a plasma, where ions of an inert gas (Argon) are electrically accelerated in a high vacuum toward a target of pure metal or metal alloy, such as titanium or chrome.

Upon impact, the argon ions sputter the material from the solid target surface forming a metal vapor, which becomes part of the highly reactive plasma and is then deposited as a thin film on the substrate. The target is kept at low temperature, since the process is not one of evaporation, making sputtering one of the most flexible deposition techniques.