HiPIMS – improved coating performance
through high plasma ionisation

High performance coatings through high pulse

On the way to even more efficient coatings business and science institutes seek continuously after optimised solutions. With the use of high-power pulsed magnetron sputtering (HiPIMS), PVD technology frees up significant potential.

Besides several other parameters such as reactive and inert gas pressures, substrate bias and system-dependent parameters, ionisation during the coating process is of most important significance for the quality of PVD coatings.

Improved quality through system optimisation

CemeCon has early recognized the coherence between ionisation and coating quality. Contributed to numerous improvements of coating technology in the past 20 years, CemeCon implemented them in coating units of the type CC800^® for ionisation enhancement. Besides optimised magnetic fields, pulse technology and gas feeding systems the patented anode as well as booster technology are particularly responsible for the excellent characteristics of super nitride coatings.

The high ionisation of the CC800^®/9 system allows production of super nitride coatings at comparatively low bias voltages. That means the growing coating is constantly exposed to an intense low energy bombardment. Through this soft but highly dosed ion bombardment a constantly high compression of the coating without unnecessary defects is generated.

Therefore super nitrides distinguish themselves in practice by their extremely low residual stress of about
-1 (Giga Pascal) Gpa, while most conventional coating materials have residual stress of -3 to -4 Gpa. Reduced residual stress has enormous advantages: Among other things, it allows higher coating thicknesses, better and smoother coatings at cutting edges as well as optimised adhesion.

High Power – Top Performance

To further increase ionisation, CemeCon has been forcing development of this technology together with HiPIMS inventors for two years now. With HiPIMS instead of conventional DC plasma stimulation pulsed plasma with short turn on and relatively long turn off times is utilized. Typically, the plasma-duty factor is 1:100 at approx. 50 to 500 Hz. Therefore a 10kW DC-power output can be divided into short pulses of approx. one MW and accordingly extended downtimes.

Extremely high pulse streams of HiPIMS form a very dense plasma in front of the coating sources. Nearly all atoms of the coating source will be ionised when passing through the plasma, which leads to a significant ionisation enhancement.

Very close to research

Up to now, seven CC800^®/9 HiPIMS systems were built and delivered to research institutions. Together with these institutions CemeCon optimises HiPIMS as well as booster technology for various fields of application. More dense and more homogeneous coatings are the objectives of research here.

Main focus of all work is currently on further development of super nitrides towards further reduced residual stress and improved performance.

HiPIMS – improved coating performancethrough high plasma ionisation

HiPIMS – improved coating performance
through high plasma ionisation