Course Objectives

• Learn about a broad range of evaporation techniques: technology and fundamentals
• Understand evaporation mechanisms
• Review of gas kinetics
• Evaporation and equilibrium vapor pressure (thermodynamics and kinetics)
• Thermal and electron beam evaporation sources: materials issues
• Deposition rate monitors: advantages and disadvantages
• Evaporation of alloys and compounds: kinetics and materials considerations
• MBE (solid source and gas source): system design and film growth kinetics
• The role of energetic particles: ion plating, ion-beam assisted deposition, etc.
• Pulsed-laser deposition
• Vacuum-arc deposition
• Processes controlling film growth and properties
• Stress evolution in evaporated films

Course Description

Thermal evaporation is employed in a very wide variety of film-growth processing technologies with applications ranging from optics, magnetics, and microelectronics to wear and corrosion resistance to functional and decorative coatings. This course provides an understanding of thermal evaporation and related processes; the relationship between evaporation rate and vapor pressure; flux directionality; and film thickness uniformity. Advantages and disadvantages of common and specialized evaporation sources including filaments, boats, effusion cells, Knudsen cells, and electron beam sources are described with examples. Reactive evaporation of compounds such as oxides, nitrides, sulfides, etc. is compared with ion-assisted techniques including ion plating, activated-reactive evaporation, pulsed-laser deposition, and vacuum-arc deposition for compositional control of complex materials. The use of in-situ deposition rate monitors including quartz crystal oscillators and optical spectroscopy is also covered.
Fundamental aspects, as well as the technology, of thin film nucleation and growth by evaporation are discussed and highlighted with many examples.

Course Materials

Detailed course notes with extensive reference lists provided.