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Oct 20 , 2024
In everyday life, E-Beam evaporation coating equipment is most commonly used in electronic products such as screens, phone cases, lenses, and glass. This technology is favored for its high melting point, fast efficiency, uniform coating, and the ability to coat various materials, making it predominantly used in electronic products.
The evaporation material is placed in a water-cooled steel crucible and directly heated using an electron beam. The material vaporizes and condenses on the substrate surface to form a film. This is a crucial heating method and development direction in vacuum evaporation coating technology. E-beam evaporation overcomes many drawbacks of conventional resistance heating evaporation, making it particularly suitable for producing high melting point and high-purity thin film materials.
Depending on the form of the electron beam evaporation source, vacuum evaporation technology using electron beam bombardment can be divided into several types: ring guns, straight guns, E-type guns, and hollow cathode electron guns.
Ring Gun: Uses a ring-shaped cathode to emit an electron beam, which is focused and deflected to hit the crucible, causing the metal material to evaporate. Its structure is relatively simple, but its power and efficiency are low, making it primarily a laboratory device and no longer used in production equipment.
Straight Gun: An axially symmetric linear acceleration gun where electrons are emitted from a filament cathode, focused into a fine beam, and accelerated by an anode to hit the crucible, melting and evaporating the coating material. The power of straight guns ranges from a few hundred watts to several hundred kilowatts, with applications in both vacuum evaporation and vacuum smelting. However, the evaporated material can contaminate the gun structure, affecting operational stability. Sodium ions emitted from the filament can also contaminate the film. Recent improvements by a German company include a deflection magnetic field at the electron beam exit and an independent pumping system at the filament, reducing contamination and extending gun life.
E-Type Electron Gun: A 270-degree deflection electron gun that overcomes the drawbacks of straight guns. It is one of the most commonly used electron beam evaporation sources today. E-type guns can generate high power density, melt high melting point metals, and produce high-energy evaporated particles, resulting in strong film-substrate adhesion and high-quality films. However, they require high vacuum levels and use negative high voltage, making the equipment complex, less safe, difficult to maintain, and expensive.
Hollow Cathode Electron Gun: Uses a low-voltage, high-current hollow cathode discharge to generate a plasma electron beam as the heating source. It employs a hollow tantalum tube as the cathode, with the crucible as the anode and an auxiliary anode near the tantalum tube. The high energy and ionization rate of the evaporated ions result in high-quality films. Hollow cathode electron guns require lower vacuum levels than E-type guns and operate at low voltage, making the equipment simpler, safer, and less expensive. Both E-type and hollow cathode electron guns have been successfully applied in evaporation and ion plating equipment in China, with power reaching tens of thousands of kilowatts, producing various films for mechanical, electronic, and other industries.
High Beam Density: The electron beam bombardment heat source has a high beam density, achieving much higher energy density than resistance heating sources. It can evaporate materials at temperatures above 3000 degrees Celsius with a high evaporation rate.
Purity: Since the evaporated material is placed in a water-cooled crucible, it avoids the evaporation of container materials and reactions between the container and the evaporated material, significantly improving the purity of the coating.
High Thermal Efficiency: Heat is directly applied to the surface of the evaporated material, resulting in high thermal efficiency and minimal heat conduction and radiation losses.
E-Beam evaporation coating equipment, with its high efficiency, high quality, and versatility, has become an essential tool in modern coating technology. Whether in electronic components, optical devices, or decorative coatings, E-Beam Evaporation Coating Equipment demonstrates broad application prospects. We believe that with continuous technological advancements, E-Beam Evaporation Coating Equipment will play a crucial role in more fields, providing strong support for the development of various industries.
