"SV in-line" equipment concept with uninterrupted stream of substrate carriers for reactive sputtered optical multi layer coatings

The utilization of reactive pulse magnetron sputtering for deposition of antireflective (AR) , high reflective coatings (HR) and other applications require adapted equipment concepts to follow up production needs regarding high throughput and excellent process stability. The presented equipment concept is a modular open platform with upscaling possibilities. It is especially designed to perform simultaneously high qualitative dielectric coatings under different reactive gas conditions and different reactive gases also in combination with metal coatings. "SV in-line" allows individual substrate carrier handling as well as uninterrupted substrate carrier stream for reactive sputtered optical multi layer coatings in production environment with a high versatility and high complexity for different applications. The special design concept of the sputter machine, of the magnetrons and of the process control system minimise the unwanted influence of adjacent technological sections. This allows to realize a very compact in-line equipment. A special feature is the ability to use both pulse modes (unipolar or bipolar) as technological parameters to optimize the properties of the deposited films. Examples will be reported. Results are reported on long term process stability for entire target life time for production needs and on product development of optical multi layer coatings for AR and HR applications on glass and plastic substrates. Furthermore investigations are presented regarding the increase of process stability and yield using on-line process control based upon in-situ measurement of different film parameters.