Proc. Electron Beam Melting and Refining State of the Art, Bakish Materials Corp., In Press, 2000.

  Directed vapor deposition (DVD) is a recently developed electron beam-based evaporation technology designed to enhance the creation of high performance thick and thin film coatings on small area surfaces (generally 100 cm2 or less). DVD technology development has been driven by a desire to combine four processing capabilities into one industrially-appealing system. These capabilities are:

1) very high rate deposition (5 um/min and higher over a 100 cm2 area),

2) very high material utilization efficiencies (on 100 cm2 areas, efficiencies should at least triple that of other coating technologies),

3) precise control of growing film atomic structure, and

4) highly flexible definition of growing film atomic composition.

These criteria have led to the development of a unique plasma-enhanced electron beam evaporation tool which will be described here. Initial experimental and modeling results will also be presented to demonstrate how the selected technology solution is allowing the desired processing features to be achieved.