What do PVD coatings do? Coatings are based on what principle? In what way does a coating form?

In general, physical vapor deposition (PVD) involves the evaporation or sublimation of solids and their connection to a substrate by forming a thin film.

As the name implies, film formation is basically a physical process.

 As shown in Figure 1, the three most important PVD processes can be categorised into evaporation (Evaporation), sputtering (Sputtering), and ion plating (Ion Plating).

AIP (Arc Ion Plating) is the PVD technology used by our company. AIP's vacuum system is illustrated in figure 2.

To implement this method, we use an application tool to ensure the system is under our control. A production process diagram illustrates the actual production equipment of the company by using high current and low voltage to produce radiation to generate metal targets, initiate and initiate arc photoelectric plasma flow, and apply negative bias power to the substrate end of the plated object for dissociating positively charged ions. PVD is typically used to coat tools or coating females with high-density, high-capacity thin films. Other ions have coating processes, and can produce more dense and higher-capacity thin films.

The AIP process can refer to the following videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SB6xuRC4K80　

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Principle of PVD Coating-Arc Generation When the arc striking rod hits the metal target, it will first etch a hole with a diameter of 1-20 μm on the target surface, which we call the arc point. After the arc point is generated, due to local temperature rise, expansion and explosion, micro-pits will be formed on the surface of the arc point. The high temperature also vaporizes the metal pits and emits ions, atoms, electrons and metal particles. In addition to depositing a thin film on the end of the substrate, some metal ions or electrons continue to generate new arc points at other positions on the target surface, and then become a continuous arc generation behavior. As shown in figure (four).

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Principle of PVD Coating-Arc Plasma

The arc striking rod hits the metal target, triggering the cathode arc and plasma flow. The color of the plasma will be different according to the gas ratio, and the difference in the gas ratio is also the cause of the color of the coating. As shown in figure (5).

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