Driven by environmental protection, the market is actively exploring more energy-saving and environmentally friendly surface treatment processes. Compared with traditional electroplating, vacuum coating has the advantages of thin coating, fast speed, good adhesion, etc., and is suitable for surface treatment of metals, plastics, etc. And there is no wastewater pollution, which has certain advantages in environmental protection, so it is sought after by the market.
Common vacuum coating processes are divided into four categories: vacuum evaporation coating, vacuum sputtering coating, vacuum ion coating and chemical vapor deposition. They each have their own advantages and pertinence. How to choose the right vacuum coating has become a must for the development and innovation of manufacturing companies.
1. Vacuum Evaporation Coating Vacuum evaporation (Vacuum Evaporation) Coating is a vacuum coating method that uses an evaporator to heat the evaporating material under vacuum conditions to make it sublime, and the evaporating particle flow is directly shot to the substrate, and deposited on the substrate to form a solid film, or heated to evaporate the coating material. Advantages: simple equipment, easy operation; high film purity, thickness can be more accurately controlled; fast film formation rate, high efficiency. Disadvantages: poor density (can only reach 95% of the theoretical density); low film adhesion. At present, vacuum evaporation coating is more used in the surface treatment of construction engineering hardware, bathroom hardware, clocks, small hardware, and even wheels, stainless steel profiles, furniture, lighting equipment, hotel supplies, and decorations.
2. Vacuum sputtering coating uses charged particles with kinetic energy of tens of electron volts or higher to bombard the surface of the material, so that its atoms obtain high enough energy and sputter into the gas phase. This sputtering and complex particle scattering process is called sputtering. Vacuum sputtering coating is to use the sputtering phenomenon to make various thin films. Advantages: good controllability and repeatability of film thickness; strong adhesion to the substrate; high purity and high quality of the film layer; can prepare films of materials different from the target material. Disadvantages: film formation speed is lower than evaporation coating; substrate temperature is high; easily affected by impurity gases; device structure is more complex. At present, the most commonly used sputtering coating technology is magnetron sputtering coating technology. This technology can increase the probability of collision with gas, increase the sputtering rate of the target material, and ultimately increase the deposition rate. Therefore, it is more suitable for functional films with absorption, transmission, reflection, refraction, polarization and other functions, decoration fields, and microelectronics fields.
3. Vacuum ion plating Vacuum ion plating is a new coating technology developed on the basis of vacuum evaporation plating and sputtering plating. By carrying out the entire vapor deposition process in plasma, the vacuum ion plating process greatly improves the energy of the film particles, can obtain a film with better performance, and expands the application field of "thin film". Advantages: strong adhesion, not easy to fall off; improved coverage of the film layer; high coating quality; fast film formation speed; high density and small grains. Disadvantages: The substrate must be a conductive material. Due to its excellent coating performance, vacuum ion plating has a wider range of applications. It is currently mainly used in: mechanical parts, aircraft, ships, automobiles, exhaust pipes, aircraft engines, high-speed rotating parts, tools, superhard molds, etc.
4. Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) CVD technology uses gaseous compounds or mixtures of compounds to react chemically on the heated surface of the substrate, thereby generating a non-volatile coating on the surface of the substrate. Advantages: simple operation, strong flexibility, suitable for single or composite film layers and composite film layers; wide applicability; deposition rate can reach several microns to hundreds of microns per minute, high production efficiency; suitable for coating substrates with complex shapes; good coating density. Disadvantages: high deposition temperature, which can easily lead to degradation of substrate performance; reaction gases and reaction tail gases may have certain corrosiveness, flammability and toxicity; the coating is very thin.
CVD method is mainly used in two major directions: 1. Preparation of coatings, improvement and improvement of the surface properties of materials or parts, improvement or improvement of the oxidation resistance, wear resistance, corrosion resistance and certain electrical, optical and tribological properties of materials or parts. 2. Development of new structural materials. At present, CVD technology has been widely used in many aspects such as protective film layers, microelectronics technology, solar energy utilization, optical fiber communication, superconducting technology, and preparation of new materials. In addition, in the preparation of powder materials, the use of efficient and stable catalysts to promote the CVD powder making process, or combining with physical methods to prepare powder materials under low temperature and high vacuum conditions has also become the future development direction of chemical vapor deposition technology.
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