Hind High Vacuum Co. Pvt. Ltd. (HHV), announced that it has partnered with RV College of Engineering, Bangalore (RVCE) on a solar research project. HHV has successfully developed and commissioned a sophisticated dual process thin film deposition system at the research centre in RVCE.
Thin film technology and the R&D group of HHV has been working together with the college on this project to develop high performance thin film coatings for solar thermal application, as a part of the project titled “Development of multilayer coatings for enhanced solar thermal absorption at high temperature” sanctioned by Department of Science and Technology (DST).
Established in 1965 at Bangalore to develop Indian self-reliance in high vacuum technology, HHV has now grown into a leading global player involved in the design, development and manufacture of off-the-shelf and customized equipment and products based on Vacuum Science & Technology.
Said Mr Prasanth Sakhamuri, Managing Director, HHV, “We are extremely pleased to partner with RVCE in their Golden Jubilee year, on this prestigious DST research project. This dual processes system has been designed to use Physical Vapor Deposition system (PVD) and Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition system (PECVD) process independently or in combination of both for the development of thin film. It facilitates to feed various gases suited to specific requirements and with in-built software to create database of the developed recipes. More than one stored recipe can be retried from the database for re-program them to deposit a multi-layer coatings in a single auto operation.”
Globally, scientists are aggressively working to enhance the solar energy absorption efficiency of thin film coatings for cost effective power generations. At present, they are working with PVD or PECVD systems independently to develop recipes / materials to achieve a high absorption and low emittance multi-layer solar thermal coatings in mid and high temperature applications.
Recently, the attention is getting focused for more flexible, high performance multi-process-chamber thin film deposition system for precise control of processes suitable for research and development in solar thermal applications. It should facilitate to work with a chamber or a combination of chambers to attain multi-layer coatings to specific applications. HHV’s sophisticated dual process thin film deposition system has all the said features.
HHV’s dual process tool has 2 process chambers PVD and PECVD with a load lock chamber at the centre. An in-line motorized transport mechanism inside the chambers and a user friendly control station are integrated with the system. A turbo based vacuum pumping system suitably designed to achieve ultimate vacuum of 1 x 10-6 m.bar.
The PVD process chamber is equipped with four numbers of rectangular planar magnetrons with target size of 60 mm (W) × 400 mm (L) and two pulsed DC and a DC power supply of each 1000W. The substrate can be heated up 400 deg C and can be rotated in the range of 2 to 10 rpm. And the substrate holder is designed to hold the tube of diameter 1 inch, 2 inch and 3 inch having a feet length.
The rectangular PECVD chamber has two replaceable parallel electrodes of size 65 mm wide × 400 mm long with shower and RF Power supply 600 wattage with 13.56 MHz frequency.
An independent mass flow controllers facilitates to feed Argon (0-500SCCM), Oxygen (0-50 SCCM), Nitrogen (0-50 SCCM), Methane (0-50 SCCM) to PVD system, and Hydrogen (0-200 SCCM), Silane (0-200 SCCM), Germane (0-50 SCCM), Methane (0-50 SCCM), Ammonia (0-50 SCCM), and Carbon di-oxide (0-50 SCCM)nto PECVD process chamber.
The entire process is automated with PLC, SCADA and industrial personal computer.
