Metal Coating by Plasma Bombardment - Magnetron Sputtering

In today's video, I'll be showing you my self-designed magnetron. This allows me to coat surfaces with a variety of materials in a process called 'sputtering'.
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[@Muonium1]

In electron beam evaporation vacuum coating the cleanliness of a glass surface must be extremely high, like... atomically clean. When we do multi-layer dielectric coatings for coffee table sized optics to make them into mirrors for the National Ignition Facility fusion laser, the glass is cleaned by removing the top few layers of atoms. We scrub the glass with a toothpaste like thick suspension of nanosized alumina particles (0.05 um) called Baikalox and rinse with deionized 18 megaohm water. You can tell when the glass is clean because it will be perfectly hydrophyllic with absolutely no water beading anywhere. If you watch the DI water dry on the surface in a cleanroom you can see the Newton's fringes forming on the final few layers of water molecules as they sheet off and evaporate. When the glass is then loaded into the coater it is heated to a couple hundred C by quartz lamps to drive off the last layer of water molecules adhering to the dangling O and Si bonds of the glass surface. It sounds complicated and expensive but you could probably do it well enough with a simple setup and no cleanroom for very cheap with any common polishing slurry. The main metric of importance is the total lack of any hydrophobicity of the glass after cleaning.

[@matthewbrightman3398]

That’s incredible. Cool stuff!

[@ericlotze7724]

That must have been a really special (albeit maybe stressful because of that!) project to be a part of!

[@ericlotze7724]

Did you use thise giant lapping machines for the Baikalox , or some other setup?

[@Muonium1]

@@ericlotze7724 Actual surface figure polishing was done at another facility before the glass was sent to us for coating. We're only removing a few atoms thickness with the final hand cleaning, so it doesn't change the optical properties.

[@driverjamescopeland]

The reason they're held to such stringent standards, is to avoid any anomalies in the reflection... which is a huge factor, when you're dealing with once-in-a-lifetime data. That level of precision isn't necessary for 99.9999% of the market. Sputtering is used in all kinds of industries for various purposes. Sometimes, such as with some aluminum applications, the layer is applied with the intent of near-immediate degradation/oxidation to protect the base material.

[@Aleksanti]

Very good! You are becoming more and more involved in the interesting part of vacuum technology! Sputtering is one of the most interesting ways of depositing materials, specially when reactive gasses are involved. Few tips: 1) Dont use such high pressures, try and stay in the 1x10-2mBar (get a baratron), if you go to high, the plasma will be super hot and the particles cant reach your substrate because of too much gas particles blocking them. 2) Keep the distance from target to substrate to a maximum, dont let the plasma touch whatever your trying to coat, it will destroy the layer(exactly what your problem is with adhesion). 3) Evaporation rate is usually very low with sputtering (5A/s is considered very high), so keep the energy down, let things be cool and take your time. If the layer gets too thick, and the substrate is cool, from my experience, anything above 2000A will start to flake off... 4) Use high pumping speeds and mass flow controller is a must that has a loop with baratron, i have used MKS systems that controls everything, from the gate valve position to the the mass flow controller, basically a closed servo loop that allows for steady pressure. 5) Consider getting a RF supply and a matching box, you can then do dielectric depositions, with DC you cant.

[@AdvancedTinkering]

Thank you very much for the helpful tips! Today I tested placing the substrate as far from the magnetron as my chamber allows. However, the layer was still very poor, especially where the layer thickness was too high. Interestingly, this problem did not happen when using thermal evaporation, even though the layer thickness was higher. Of course, adhesion to the glass was generally much worse, but at least it was a nice reflective surface. Other comments suggested applying a layer of chrome first to improve the adhesion of the copper. I will test this as soon as I get hold of a chrome target. Building a closed loop for the measuring device and the MFC is a very good idea! Sounds like a new project haha.

[@sealpiercing8476]

@@AdvancedTinkering Thin metal films are often under high stress, and in some cases this is the main limitation on achievable film thickness. The stress can be tensile or compressive, and depends on deposition rate, deposition process, substrate temperature and probably a few other things I don't remember. I think the stress applied to a 1 mm thick glass substrate by a 100 nm thick metal film will warp it enough to be practically measured by the kind of interferometric measurement you would use for lens figuring (I calculate 650 m radius of curvature with 200 MPa stress in film, which would cause 125 nm deflection in the middle of a 2.5 cm span) but there may be a more practical way to go about it if need be.

[@simontillson482]

One idea I would try is pumping down with just air in the chamber first, and running the magnetron at low power to get a visible glow. Should work as a poor reactive ion etch to super clean and activate the glass surface. Then introduce the argon and proceed as usual. Those dangling oxygen (and maybe nitrogen) groups coupled with the complete absence of organics should help adhesion. As for surface quality, the fact that your windows got a super mirror surface but the slides didn’t just shows your deposition rate is too high - the flux of metal ions above the sputterer is way too dense which is causing agglomeration (blobbiness). Turn down the mA to something like 1/10th what you were using and it should improve a lot. Copper is the worst for this, although not as bad as silver or tin. Refractory metals cool faster, so titanium and tungsten can be coated at a higher current density and go much faster. With soft or low melting metals, you need to go low and slow.

[@onmyworkbench7000]

The CVC 601that I ran used a 13.56 MHz RF source.

[@BillDemos]

The distancing will NOT solve his problem. It is ELECTRONS that are hitting the substrate and amorphise and crystal that is growing. You either use a facing magnetron topology (look it up) to try to trap those rogue electrons in between them, increase the magnetic field strength or decrease your power. You do NOT mind if positive ions hit your substrate, it is actually good for the final quality, what you want to avoid is those pesky electrons. This advise comes from someone who routinely can do ALO, ZNO, ITO with hugely good optical and electrical properties. Also, RF would be nice in some situations, but you can do ceramics also with DC, with reactive sputtering. For example for the Oxides you would just use Oxygen in your chamber, and for the Nitrides, you would just use Nitrogen! To have VERY good looking un-oxidised metal deposits, you can also use a small amount of Hydrogen in your Argon.

[@conrad2468]

If you watch Ben Krasnow's channel he has a whole video on slide prep for sputter coating. It's suspicious that titanium coats well while copper doesn't though so I don't think slide prep is the issue. He does talk about plasma cleaning a lot which you didn't mention. I love this!

[@AdvancedTinkering]

Yes, I know Ben's video. His channel is just brilliant overall. In the future, I want to install a plasma cleaning setup in my chamber.

[@ONRIPRESENCE]

Titanium is used as an adhesive layer in many thin film structures. There are other thin film adhesive metals including: Cr, Al, Ta, Mo, Nb, V, & Hf. Copper won't stick too well by itself 😀.

[@hoosierdaddy1469]

For the sacrificial lens cover, my mind immediately thought of clear plastic wrap (e.g. "Saran wrap"). Your project is awesome!

[@anonomousman1]

This is exactly what we use in our sputter systems, and it works very well! We use a different sputter technique.

[@danmartinrc]

Perfect timing! I was about to eat my puffed rice for breakfast, but now I know how to prepare it properly. 👍

[@christopherleubner6633]

The reason for the rough coating was a combination of high deposition rate plus the high energy ions building up a static charge. On the viewport you are getting a lower depositing rate and the copper is mostly as neutral atoms by that point. ❤

[@onmyworkbench7000]

Cool video, back in the mid 1990's I worked at a company in Sarasota Florida that produced pressure sensors for the automotive industry, I ran a CVC 601 Magnetron Sputtering System that we used to deposit SiO2 on pressure diaphragms then we Sputtered Nichrome on top of the SiO2 and after the diaphragms were removed from the Sputtering machine they went to a LASER where a Weatstone was etched into the Nichrome as the sensing element of the pressure sensors.

[@argoneum]

6:54 You revealed The Universal Truth about DIY. Nothing more. In my opinion this is important ingredient of being happy and mentally healthy, not to mention side effects of becoming good at what you do after several iterations of improvements. Kudos Sir 😸💪

[@ahillen]

Your chamber is really coming along, love the custom magnetron. There's already a lot of good feedback on cleaning and process parameters already. Couple of things to add. Most common sputtering metals gold, silver, copper etc have very low adhesion to glass. Even with perfectly clean glass, as the coating thickness increases surface stresses build up and cause the coating to pull away. This causes the rough appearance on your slides. The viewports are farther away which slowed the deposition and reduced the surface stress. Increasing the slide distance to the magnetron will help but thick coatings will always be fragile unless the adhesion is improved. Typically an adhesion promoter layer is added between the glass and the thick conductor layer. A few nm of pure chromium is the usual recommendation since it sticks well to most things, but you could also try a high chrome content stainless, as an easy to source option.

[@BillDemos]

No, the rough appearance on his glasses are due to very bad crystal quality. If you try to reactively sputter ATO, ZnO, ITO, AlO, or whatever transparent, you will see this effect even more pronounced. On metals you cannot really see how bad their crystal lattice is until you do some Xray on them. It has taken me years to perfect sputtering. In the literature you will find the ways to mitigate the low quality problem: either use facing magnetrons, limit the power, or increase the magnetic field. All these will help with much better quality but will reduce the throughput. The best way is to NOT let ANY electrons hit your surface. They either put a negative bias behind the substrate, or, like in my case, use a totally different geometry to planar sputtering...

[@alexandermarsteller7848]

Great to see that you managed to build such a nice setup. From past experience of getting glass coated, the companies that did it for me used a layer system with a titanium / titanium oxide layer for bonding to the glass, and then the actual desired coating on top of the titanium oxide. From some personal experience with magnetron sputtering: depending on the conditions like pressure you can produce clusters of the atoms of your target, which can behave very much different from atoms. Might affect the adhesion and later surface finish.

[@BillDemos]

Well, I do ion implantation first and then sputtering as normal.

[@flomojo2u]

So cool, I love magnetron sputtering! Tried it many times myself, with varying degrees of success. I really appreciate the helpful comments too, as there are a lot of potential mistakes you can make.

[@chrisl3540]

You should first process the slides with plasma cleaning to prepare the surface for sputtering. A cool experiment will be to sputter quartz over aluminum to make a durable first surface mirror.

[@AdvancedTinkering]

Plasma cleaning is also a project I will work on in the future :)

[@imajeenyus42]

@@AdvancedTinkering As a quick test, you might want to try flaming the microscope slides - pass them through a butane torch flame a few times. This apparently really cleans the surface, both by thermally evaporating any contaminants, and also reaction of the ions in the flame. Many years ago when I was playing with thermal deposition, I tried this and it really seemed to help.

[@AdvancedTinkering]

@@imajeenyus42 I haven’t heard of that method before. Thanks a lot! I will try that.

[@BillDemos]

He could increase the power and get to ion implantation. Surely there atoms will stick :)

[@sealpiercing8476]

Wow, this is great! Some microscope slides have a coating, not sure what kind, but it prevents adhesion. In general, the reliability of coating is strongly constrained by the cleaning process. For good results you need to do an effective wet cleaning and then some sort of no-rinse dry cleaning, ideally with plasma or UV/ozone. If the final cleaning is not in situ, under vacuum, the next best thing is to do it and then load the samples promptly. UV/ozone is a good cheap option, and it thoroughly and repeatably removes organics, so if your wet cleaning step is effective at removing unwanted inorganics it is fully adequate. The downside is that it ensures every surface is an oxide surface, whereas an insitu argon plasma etch would potentially let you coat something with titanium, break vacuum to change targets, etch the oxide film with plasma, and then coat with some other metal--10-20 nm of titanium underlayer is the usual way (edit: I remembered incorrectly; titanium is only one common choice of underlayer) to obtain strongly adherent thin metal films.

[@ljubomirculibrk4097]

Chromium usualy is used as not weting coating

[@sealpiercing8476]

​@@ljubomirculibrk4097 True, Cr is also commonly used.

[@ericlotze7724]

@AppliedScience has GREAT videos on “Critical Cleaning” and a demo on “Plasma Cleaning”.

[@gamerpaddy]

that magnetron looks more professional than the actual commercial stuff but keep in mind those magnets have a quite low curie point of like 85°C or something. there are H grades that withstand 150°C but at limited sizes.

[@AdvancedTinkering]

Thank you very much! It has grown a bit larger than necessary because I lacked some experience in estimating the material thicknesses with which the milled components would still function. The magnets should never exceed 50°C through the water cooling. If I touch the target directly after sputtering, it is only slightly warm.

[@tracybowling1156]

Man! You are so smart! You did an excellent job designing your parts. The whole video is very interesting and entertaining. I laughed aloud at some parts. I def noticed you being funny.😊

[@JigilJigil]

Another great video, keep up the good work, and I am eagerly waiting for the Magnetron video.

[@ashottumaghyan]

I am currently in the process of making my own sputtering system and this was just on time. And I would love any more videos on the sputtering system or PVD for that matter. Great video, great channel!

[@oneilgoisot9615]

Its really impressive how you build a very professional setup in no time

[@GSAZYNSKI]

This is where having a very good knowledge of both physics and chemistry is most useful. Someone in an earlier comment mentioned glass being _atomically clean._ I'm not sure to what degree of cleanliness is needed and whether it can be achieved physically or chemically- possibly through a powerful oxidizer like Piranha solution. Other factors to consider would be obvious high voltage and heat dangers. Not sure if the charged particles have enough energy to generate X-rays of concern. If you have a copy of Strong's _Procedures in Experimental Physics,_ you could make some fascinating things, although one could make things of serious danger.

[@DrZoidbergism]

Nice Video, I like how your production quality went way up

[@jimsvideos7201]

Here's a guy with the best toys.

[@jimsvideos7201]

Also a corrosion-resistant first-surface mirror is relevant to my interests.

[@EliasExperiments]

Wow such a cool video, very well done!

[@AdvancedTinkering]

Thank you! I'm very excited for our next collaboration!

[@daisywong-ke1kz]

Cool thing! Never stop that man!!🤩🤩

[@alexreeve]

Fascinating process, well explained too :)

[@mathbc1984]

16:32 The reason you get a perfectly coated side windows and not a perfect microscope slide is due to the temperature difference between the 2. The microscope slide is too near from the plasma and the material is not really condensing in slow atomic layer. Nest time, if you put methane gaz and a diamond sample, you will be able to grow diamond.cUS20110151226A1 - Synthetic CVD diamond. If you search in the world most favorite search engine this phrase : H BAR Patents for C30B 25 - Single-crystal growth by chemical reaction of reactive gases, e.g. chemical vapour deposition growth (13,302). You will have all the patent from 2010 about CVD (Control Vapour Deposition)

[@BillDemos]

1. Increased heat on the substrate actually fixes quality problems. His problem is elsewhere, I have explained him in another comment. 2. To do diamond, you need Methane as you said, but only at around 1% in Hydrogen. If you don't use Hydrogen in the mix, you will get graphite instead of diamond.

[@mathbc1984]

@@BillDemos Thanks of the answer, your hypothesis is really good. Just need to repeat It with other material. Your anwser : @BillDemos il y a 1 heure Ok, perfect, this is what happened to me as well, after having finished my first sputtering machine. Despite sputtering being known for good adhesion, even the adhesion was bad on some cases. The worst part? You almost saw it with the copper deposition: bad crystal quality. Almost totally amorphous. You will see how bad the quality is if you try to do some ZnO, ITO, or anything transparent. So, it took me a whole MONTH to realise what was going on. The problem causer: ELECTRONS! High speed electrons BREAK your bonds! That is why your side glasses turned out ok, their crystal lattice was not bombarded with electrons. If you read the literature you will see they try to mitigate it that way (as you did by chance), or they use facing magnetrons. The problem there, is when you raise the magnetic strength, you get better quality as less electrons make it across, BUT you get also LESS atoms going across, reducing speed. I would suggest you either go to another geometry and break free from the standard magnetron setup, or go altogether to a molecular beam. Sputtering in that incarnation is pretty useless. I hope any of this helps. Regards from Greece.

[@CBJamo]

I think this is your best video yet. I'm sure the editing and production took a lot of work, and it shows. Keep it up!

[@AdvancedTinkering]

Thank you! I appreciate it! Yes the editing sometimes takes longer than filming...

[@hanfo420]

it is like cooking. first try was too hot, so it couldn’t stick, but later on the window. also to have quicker results you can move the sample slowly and steadily. like roasting a marshmallow.

[@jmcarreiro]

Love seeing the progress you're making and the process you're going through! It's just so interesting and I didn't know how much I needed more since watching Ben's videos on sputtering way back when.

[@PCBWay]

Extremely informative. Thanks for the deep and thorough dive! 🥳

[@BillDemos]

Ok, perfect, this is what happened to me as well, after having finished my first sputtering machine. Despite sputtering being known for good adhesion, even the adhesion was bad on some cases. The worst part? You almost saw it with the copper deposition: bad crystal quality. Almost totally amorphous. You will see how bad the quality is if you try to do some ZnO, ITO, or anything transparent. So, it took me a whole MONTH to realise what was going on. The problem causer: ELECTRONS! High speed electrons BREAK your bonds! That is why your side glasses turned out ok, their crystal lattice was not bombarded with electrons. If you read the literature you will see they try to mitigate it that way (as you did by chance), or they use facing magnetrons. The problem there, is when you raise the magnetic strength, you get better quality as less electrons make it across, BUT you get also LESS atoms going across, reducing speed. I would suggest you either go to another geometry and break free from the standard magnetron setup, or go altogether to a molecular beam. Sputtering in that incarnation is pretty useless. I hope any of this helps. Regards from Greece.

[@barry7608]

Thanks great project thousands of potential, no pun, experiments

[@ronp6108]

Definitely interested in the power supply as well

[@boundaryegg1384]

wonderful video absolutely amazing as always. keep it up 👍

[@AdvancedTinkering]

Thank you a lot!

[@y33t23]

Bro thought he could casually flex his Organspendeausweis without us noticing

[@pattheplanter]

Shouldn't he have filled in his name and signed it?

[@yannick-was-taken]

@@pattheplanter Probably a spare one. They're free to order online, for example to give to friends and family

[@IanGrams]

13:08 I loved your reaction here at your fix working so well. I know the sound of joyous hand rubbing anywhere 🙏😁 Overall seems like a really nice setup and I look forward to seeing what more you do with it. I think it was a good idea to make the deeper dive on the magnetron a separate video and I'm looking forward to that, too.

[@GenosseRot]

I think it is the deposition rate leading to a different grow on the substrate and on the view port glass. You view port glass is much further away. Another thing to consider is heat. Your plasma directly touches the substrate. I guess it will get hot during the sputtering. This can also reduce the quality of the sputtering process. And last but not least: You cleaned your glass substrate, right? At least with some isopropanol and then water in an ultrasonic bath for 10 min.

[@mikesalm5053]

With the copper, you should try doing a base coat with titanium or something similar and then the copper will adhere a bit better.

[@miraclo3]

You should make a pair of custom mirrored sunglasses. That would look awesome. The thought Emporium did something similar.

[@kallekula84]

I hope you can make more frequent videos now with your new awesome setup. Love the videos, please keep them coming!

[@AdvancedTinkering]

Thank you! Time is still a limiting factor. But I will do my best to make videos more frequent.

[@theafro]

Online machining services are great, but you're not a fully functioning human being without machine tools of your own! Great work though, it's only when you see the real practicalities of a technology that you actually understand it, Thanks!

[@AdvancedTinkering]

Haha, that's true! As soon as my budget allows, I will definitely get a lathe and milling machine.

[@procactus9109]

That's pretty cool... I want one

[@matts2581]

That was fookin' fresh! 🌈🤗

[@Bmotiontech]

Good job!!

[@Kargoneth]

The copper coating the viewports is not colinear with the plasma. Perhaps the purest copper with the optimal deposition velocity can be found at the fringes. The viewports are far from your source and might also be colder than your intended deposition target.

[@kaibroeking9968]

Finally, you can settle the important question whether rice with a coating of 20 nm ITO tastes better than rice with 20 nm W. Great Magnetron, by the way, and thanks for all the great info on building the magnetron! If you want to get rid of the rusting issue on your magnetic yoke: ferritic stainless steels are magnetic. They also conduct heat better than their austenitic counterparts: 1.4003 (ANSI 410) is one.

[@AdvancedTinkering]

Thanks for the advice! I would have loved to coat the puffed rice with gold and actually eat it. But getting a gold target was a little bit outside my budget.

[@christopherleubner6633]

Single gram bullion bars of gold are not too bad, and would be good for this application.

[@bobweiram6321]

I wonder if there's any nutritional value if you eat puffed rice sputter coated with iron? It might make a great KZbin scamercial product.

[@FullSpeed_only]

Could the Yoke be coated with Nickel for Example? Very nice Magnetron. I hope you are willing to share the Design Files.

[@musiqtee]

This must be the first time in YEARS I’ve laughed my *** of from a sponsor segway _and_ clicked ‘like’ simultaneously… 😂 (And a great video, but that goes for all of them… 👍)

[@unusualfabrication9937]

love this channel

[@AdvancedTinkering]

Thank you! I appreciate hearing that!

[@zyeborm]

You could nickel plate that iron plate pretty easily if you wanted to stop it rusting. Also I think PET film might be good for a sacrificial layer for your windows. It's easily available (florist shops have it for wrapping flowers) and should be fine in high vacuum. You could even rig it to be pulled off during runs if you needed to. Perhaps you could just cut a cylinder of it and sit it inside the whole chamber, it's cheap and stiff enough that it'll just sit there.

[@infestus5657]

To get a even coating the substrate often gets moved around. Also, the scratch test can be refined by pre scratching a grid in the thin Film, and then trying the tape test.

[@ugarit5404]

Im excited for the prospects this device brings,cant wait to see more stuff sputtered on things. Can you try sputtering some metal oxides and other ceramics in the next videos? Or maybe you can even attempt making a beryllium mirror?

[@SuLokify]

Aerogel would also be neat. Would love to hold a block with a nice smooth metal finish

[@Maadhawk]

13:20 Actually, we can see the green color of the copper ions in the plasma. Perhaps it didn't show clearly for you in your camera, but the video does show it clearly. Copper always has such a nice, pretty green glow.

[@andyherle]

This project is insanely interesting. I’d love a more in depth analysis of how you designed your parts.

[@hawtpotato90210]

hey i want to see you talk about the powersupply in details as well. You built it, i think you should make the content for it. your insights are very valuable.

[@AdvancedTinkering]

In my second video about the different parts I also briefly covered the power supply: kzbin.info/www/bejne/g6TPl6endpx_j9k

[@ONRIPRESENCE]

Some great thin film adhesion materials (3-10 nm): Cr, Al, Ta, Mo, Nb, V, & Hf.

[@maxhoweth]

I'm patientley waiting for that magnetron video! Hopefully with pricing I'm very curious how expensive PCBway's CNC is! Because my local CNC guy is very expensive

[@Saiyana]

16:00 could it be something to do with how the target glass is directly above the sputterer? could the copper have too much energy when hitting the target and not stick properly?

[@AdvancedTinkering]

Yes, I'm relatively sure the distance is at least one factor. As you can see, the edges of the microscope slide has a "mirror finish". Just like the vacuum chamber walls. I tried increasing the distance but it did not change much. The copper "flaked" in the middle. Maybe I have to preheat the substrate.

[@stevensokalski9151]

The rough surface could be due to pitting from plasma etching. The slides were very close to the plume so even though the plasma was depositing metal ions, those same metal ions would cause etching and pitting because of their high kinetic energy. The viewports were further away and indirect, so they got all vapor and no etching. You can try moving the substrate further away from the plasma plume to minimize the etching.

[@smizmar8]

Id love to see the 3dprinter convert, vinyl cutters seems to be all the rage, but they're unreasonably priced at least here in aus.

[@AdvancedTinkering]

There are good tutorials online. It's basically just a drag knive mounted to the extruder of the 3D printer. But I can try to include a short section about the conversion into the lithography video.

[@Ma_X64]

Having MOT-based power supply for such experiments is extremelly dangerous. It would be MUCH safier to have high frequency converter because even if you touch HV parts directly you would have a burn but the HF current will not fri your inside but 50 Hz 2000V definitely will. And it would be good to have some ground leak cut-off switch on HV side. __________ Drops of paraffin for insulation instead of Kapton tape would be much more reliable. __________ Regarding the solidity of the coating, I have two considerations. First: the surfaces to be coated must be very clean. Ben Krasnov spoke about this on the Applied Science channel. Second: probably, during direct propagation, a large number of low-energy particles reach the target and are not capable of forming a strong connection with the surface. And to the sight glass - on the contrary, the fastest. So perhaps the target object should not be placed on the main axis. This will lengthen the time, but only the best will hit the target.)

[@sandman94]

damn this is so cool

[@patrickmorse7549]

I use plastic binder sleeves as viewport covers in my sputter chamber. You are using what looks like a type 2 unbalanced magnetron with a much stronger outer magnetic field. This is going to increase the energy of the species arriving at the deposition surface and will increase the compressive film stress. If the compressive film stress is higher than or very close to the maximum adhesion stress the deposited film will delaminate from the substrate. The viewports are seeing much less compressive stress and the film adhesion is higher. If you need any assistance I design industrial large are sputtering equipment for a living.

[@zlavavann]

To achieve perfect coating on glass - you need perfect clean glass surface first. IMHO, best way - cleaning by oxigen plasma. It burns out all kinds of organic residuals on suface. It may done in your vacuum chamber with minimum modifications. Other way - chemical cleaning and activation of surface.

[@AdvancedTinkering]

I definitely have to improve my surface preparation. In this video I mainly wanted to test the magnetron. I plan on building a plasma cleaning setup inside the chamber.

[@Joemama555]

microwave magnetrons are usually powered by only half wave rectified DC, so using a **full wave bridge rectifier** (electroBOOM!) might be drawing too much current for the design of the transformer, making it hot.

[@AdvancedTinkering]

That’s good to know! But with the new rectifier the MOT does not get hot anymore. But if I ever need to increase the current, I will have to add a fan.

[@Dazdigo]

Titanium is easy, you just need a hot titanium wire in a vacuum. The Thought Emporium has some great spuddering videos.

[@mvadu]

Man that plasma looks so nice!! Way aren't you using the high voltage power supply you built few videos ago?

[@AdvancedTinkering]

Thanks! The voltage produced by the power supply I built in an earlier video is way too high and it cannot supply enough current.

[@MySuperhappyfuntime]

You can use martensitic stainless steel for the magnetic yoke - it is at least magnetic.

[@cosmoscarl4332]

The vacuum will cause the copper atoms to go in every direction. I would say a lower voltage and slower deposition rate will minimize deposition of unwanted elements.? I seem to recall, from another experiment, that the experimenters used mirros and placed the viewport behind a shield, though it was for telescope mirrors so the only element they used was aluminum. Obviously that wouldn't matter because their forty-five degree mirrors are already coated with aluminum. That would only deposit more aluminum and since the mirrors are so smooth it would never degrade the reflected image they see through their viewport. So in conclusion, you could use two flat mirrors, ( not regular mirrors like your bathroom mirrors, which have the reflective coating on the back), but two surface coated aluminized mirrors like they used to use in big projection screen televisions, to bounce the image around a shield, that protects your viewport. Coma splices everywhere! I know!

[@DCBpower]

Most glass has surface oils on them. If water doesn't make a film on a glass surface, it's dirty. Use solvent to clean.

[@thevoidedwarranty]

Very cool , great video . Please publish plans for the magnetron . Thank you

[@RevolutionAdvanced1]

You can 100% deposit ITO with thermal evaporation, ceramics give off an evaporation pressure suitable for coating well below even their melting point. Maybe the boats are unsuited for ceramics due to thermal conductivity or something, but I have with my own eyes seen it done with an e-beam.

[@AdvancedTinkering]

I didn't know that. I always thought it was only possible using reactive thermal evaporation. Thanks for clarifying!

[@RevolutionAdvanced1]

@@AdvancedTinkering SiO2 (bog standard glass) would be a good ceramic material to test this out with if you are ever at that point.

[@abduljak0]

@@AdvancedTinkering hi I have problem with my dc magnetron sputtering. Short circuit occurs every time I start increasing the power. Help me to solve this issue

[@infestus5657]

Great

[@nixnox4852]

@17:32 For those curious, it looks like the name of the channel mentioned is @HuygensOptics , which is likely to throw off most english speakers because it sounds like "hoigens".

[@dtiydr]

15:51 Its well known that copper doesn't stick very well to glass, you need very high energies to make it do that so it embed it self some nm into the glass. Otherwise first use a chrome or nickel layer because especially the chrome stick very strong to glass and then copper onto that since that stick very hard to metals.

[@soulimanezaoui4700]

رائع

[@erroneum]

I would assume the issue with the glass is that the slides weren't sufficiently clean to get a firm connection. Maybe the copper is just more sensitive to impurities than the titanium? I don't really know, though, since ultimately I'm not at all trained in this. Another thing you could try could be putting a light layer of a metal that sputters easily, such as titanium, on first, just barely thick enough to coat it, then putting down a layer of copper on top of it, sort of like how chrome plating first deposits nickel or copper below the chromium.

[@karlharvymarx2650]

I wonder if you could lay down a thin film bimetallic strip on something water soluble like sugar? Would you get a thin sheet of metal foil or aren't the metal particles sort of welded to one another? If that would result in thin metal foil, it might be cool to try to make bimetallic strips or thermoplastic. In any case, thank you for your contribution to puffed rice cake technology.

[@Exotic_Chem_Lab]

Cool😊

[@doktorjohannessen2069]

Organspendeausweis, Ehrenmann!

[@GenericAnimeBoy]

Regarding the difference in deposition quality between the chamber sightglasses and the slides: your chamber glass is regularly exposed to high vacuum so it's probably extremely clean. How clean are the microscope slides though? Ben from Applied Science did a series on sputtering on his channel a while back and he did an entire video about cleaning...even the very fine airborne particulates and oils can be enough contamination to interfere with adhesion to the sputtering substrate.

[@AdvancedTinkering]

How clean the surface is, is definitely an important factor. But I don't think it was the reason here. Because the surface created by thermal evaporation was that much better. The adhesion was still poor but it had a mirror finish. Nevertheless I want to build a plasma cleaning setup in the future.

[@Brocknoviatch]

Just watched how a blue led is made. I am guessing this is a similar process? Would love to see a 3d printed ball or cylinder coated in metal. Maybe a thermal detonator?

[@Stripeyy]

pow: it's 2 am and you're on that side of youtube

[@nowortimore1445]

Would like to hear more about the powe supply you built.

[@pablothewinner1]

do you ever feel like a mad scientist? Sitting in a dark room watching a large contraption emit a massive blue light LOL

[@jpjude68]

one of the differences i see between sputtering on the target and the interior of the chamer is distance and direction... maybe the coating's adhesion changes with distance and/or direction? material properties too perhaps?

[@AdvancedTinkering]

I also considered this. Especially since the outer corners of the microscope slides have a better surface quality. I tested this and suspended the glass further away from the magnetron, but couldn't see a significant difference. Perhaps I was still too close to the plasma. Another comment also suggested that the glass should be kept as far away as possible.

[@contomo5710]

11:34 did you mean to say "violated microwave"? with that organspendeausweis gets a different meaning i do actually insanely relate to the "eating something and being annoyed that it isnt coated in metal" part also i really wonder with the viewport, theres various variations of ways to keep cameras clean, milling machines often use a spinning disk to spin away the liquid drops sprayed on it, maybe one could use some way of magnets or a charged mesh to just make a plasma shield for the windows? with the sight windows being coated and the glass slides not really quite as good, maybe different glass? the microscope ones are always greenish, the sight glasses would likely be boro or pure SiO2? even more likely tho, deposition rate id say.

[@DynoRC]

The reason behind good adhesion to sight glass is that you did not intend to coat them. Hope that answered your question 👍

[@AdvancedTinkering]

Haha, true!

[@MacTerrorable]

Bei Wasser würde ich nicht die Steckanschlüsse von Festo verwenden, sondern die zum Schrauben, die halten den Anschluss deutlich Dichter. So Lange kein wirklicher Druck da ist geht das zwar auch, aber würde ich bei der Elektrik lieber vermeiden. Klasse Video, Küsse auf deine Augen.

[@AndyRRR0791]

This is pretty awesome work! Does the sputter target get very warm at all? I'm wondering if it's possible to sputter with copper some 3D resin prints to see if I can make EDM sinker patterns with them.

[@AndyRRR0791]

I'm thinking that once you get the resin parts conductive, you can transfer to a conventional electroplating process to improve the thickness.of the form and, presumably, repair it later.

[@Lechwe]

hi, great video. can you tell me if you're wearing any eye protection when looking directly at the plasma in your chamber? i can't find anything on the brightness/radiation of the plasma forming and if its harmful to look at without safety eyewear.

[@MrSchorschschorsch]

Could you use a wire mesh at some electrical potential in front of the glass to repel the copper ions? I know it sounds like a lot of effort but would basically lead to maintenance free operation.

[@user-ob2cc2jz9w]

My idea is that the slides are too close to the magnetron, thinking it either get too much copper atoms or too fast or the path the copper takes trough the vaccum get directed by the magnet. Try using an m8 rod and nuts to place the sllides at random places inside the chamber and see what happens to the adhesion and surface flatness. i wonder how much would end up 8 meters away from the sputter if it was a big enough vaccum chamber.

[@adamwiess]

to keep the windows clean, can you use an electric or magnetic field to steer to sputtering away?

[@infestus5657]

I recently visited the IMSAS in Bremen, they used movable shields on there sputtering devices to prevent resedue from forming on the Glas. Maybe you could implement something similar.

[@infestus5657]

Maybe with magnets.

[@unknownhours]

I wonder if there some coating on the slides that may be interfering.

[@mortlet5180]

At 7:26 you can see where I think you are losing power to plasma formation and perhaps even some minor internal (invisible) arcing, between the bolt heads and the ground plate, through those big holes in the PTFE spacer/insulator. I can't see what purpose those big outer holes serve, but if creating virtual leaks is the concern, I would strongly recommend making a replacement PTFE insulator where those axial through holes are replaced by small, blind radial slits (roughly 1-2mm wide, 0.5mm deep and long enough to connect to the headspace above the bolts with the vacuum) into the surface facing the bolts. This should reduce plasma formation and the associated losses to an acceptable amount, while also giving you a visual indication of any further problematic arcing.

[@NiemanScott]

Perhaps you need to etch the glass slides. Maybe they are too smooth / not smooth enough?

[@JuulCPH]

How did you clean the glass slides before sputtering? You probably want to clean them with a solvent immediately prior to coating to get rid of any remaining minute amounts of oil.

[@kevinwoodruff9431]

Because the viewport window had a better electrical connection