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Alumina Coated Sources
What are alumina coated sources?
Aluminum oxide coated evaporation sources are used for evaporation processes benefitting from the properties of alumina. Types of coated evaporation sources range from coated boats to baskets and boxes as well. They were developed to replace alumina crucible boats for some specific applications.
Benefits of alumina coatings
Advantages of this evaporation source include good heat transfer and inertness of alumina (AO) with most metals. Additionally, the evaporant does not wet the alumina resulting in no resistance change of the boat when the material melts and longer source life. Due to alumina’s non-wetting characteristics, the evaporant forms a sphere when melted, resulting in a point source.
Gold thin films are employed in a number of applications and can be thermally evaporated by a variety of methods. Boats, baskets, crucibles, and filaments are all common sources used for this application.
However, gold, when molten, has two primary issues:
Due to its corrosiveness, gold will corrode evaporation sources over time.
Gold will try to migrate to cooler areas of the boat, escaping out of the evaporation area and creeping towards where it is mounted.
In order to maximize source lifetime and minimize loss of precious metals, alumina coated tungsten sources are ideal for gold evaporation processes.
The evaporation area of several types of boats can coated with alumina. This inert layer on the S21-AO-W prevents gold from wetting to the source, eliminating migration and corrosion.
Barrier-Style Alumina Coating
Another way to use alumina coatings is to use it as a protective barrier, controlling migration but still allowing direct thermal contact with the tungsten boat.
Source material is important for this type of boat. The .010” thick tungsten dimple of the S42B-AO-W is resilient enough to endure the corrosiveness of molten gold.
High Purity Materials
Are you looking to do a thin film deposition of gold for your process? For gold evaporation materials, consider RD Mathis Company’s high purity gold pellets, wires, and sputtering targets.
Do you have any comments or concerns you want to share with us?
Please give us a call for further questions about The Evaporator.
Phone: (562) 426-7049
Email: info@rdmathis.com
Website: rdmathis.com
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The right evaporation source can make your thin film coating process a success. Since 1963, we have been fabricating and recommending evaporation sources for our customers in various cutting-edge industries.
