Category: application

PVD Coating: Give Your Watch a Durable Coat

For most people who could not afford a pure gold watch, a gold coating may be a good choice for them. However, since it is a thin film coating, it is inevitable that the gold color would fade out. So the primary consideration in choosing the coating material/method is durability. If you want to give your watch a durable coat, you really should think about PVD coating.

What is PVD coating?

PVD coating, or Physical Vapor Deposition, refers to a variety of vacuum deposition techniques where solid metal is vaporized to produce thin films and coating. The main methods of physical vapor deposition include vacuum evaporation, sputtering deposition, arc plasma plating, ion plating, etc. PVD film has fast deposition speed as well as strong adhesion, good diffraction, and a wide application range.

Maybe you will find it not easy to understand it since PVD is a physical terminology. But actually, as a watch lover, you should just know that PVD coating can provide a metal coat to your watch, making it more beautiful and durable.

Why should you choose PVD coating?

PVD coating has high hardness, high wear resistance, low friction coefficient, good corrosion resistance, and chemical stability. So PVD coating would definitely have a longer lifetime than other traditional coatings. Apart from durability, PVD coating provides multiple kinds of metallic colors, such as gold(TiN), rose gold(TiAlN), silver(Cr2N), brass(ZrN), light grey(TiC), and so on. You will always find the one you like.

PVD Coating Colors

More tips

If you are going to give your watch a PVD coating after reading this blog, I’d like to help you save time in choosing the coating materials. Please consider Stanford Advanced Materials (SAM), which is a global supplier of various technical-grade coating materials as well as high-purity chemicals (up to 99.99999%). All of the coating materials we talked about above can be found on SAM’s website. We ensure that you can get your watch the most durable coat here.

Application and Recycling of Tungsten Metals

Tungsten, a relatively rare and exotic metal, has been widely used in many products in our daily life. Tungsten has the advantages of high melting point, high hardness, excellent corrosion resistance, and good electrical and thermal conductivity. Most of its applications are based on these properties. Tungsten is not cheap because of its scarcity, but the price of tungsten is quite reasonable compared with the prices of other rare and exotic metals.

What are the Applications of Tungsten?

Tungsten is an important alloying element for the aerospace industry and the industrial gas turbine industry, because it can significantly improve the strength, hardness, and wear resistance of steel.

Tungsten filament is used in incandescent bulbs to replace tantalum, which was used many years ago, as an integral part of copper and silver electrical contacts for improved wear resistance.  Tungsten wire can also be used to manufacture direct heating cathodes and grids of electronic oscillation tubes and cathode heaters in various electronic instruments.

Tungsten sputtering target & Ta evaporation pellets can be used as wear-resistant coatings for mechanical parts, as evaporating filaments for physical vapor deposition (PVD) of aluminum and silver, and as key barrier electrons for barrier coatings in critical electronic devices.

Some of the other applications of Tungsten include the component of chemicals and catalysts, cutting blades, paints, pigments, inks, lubricants, etc.

How to Recycle Tungsten?

Tungsten’s unique properties of heavy weight, high hardness, and high melting point make tungsten waste ideal for recycling. The fact that it is chemically resistant is a key factor in tungsten recycling. Therefore, recycling tungsten-bearing scrap is more popular. The methods of tungsten recycling can be roughly divided into the direct method and the indirect method.

Direct Tungsten Recycling

The direct method means that the tungsten waste is converted into a powder of the same composition by chemical or physical treatment or a combination of both. A typical example of a direct method is a zinc treatment method. This method has many advantages, such as limited energy consumption and chemical waste, as well as low production costs. A disadvantage of this method is the limitation on recycled materials.

Indirect Tungsten Recycling

Indirect methods, such as wet chemical processing, are commonly used in refining processes. This type of recycling has no restrictions on materials, but requires a lot of chemicals and energy.

For more information, please visit https://www.sputtertargets.net/.

An Overview of Mammary Gland Molybdenum Target X-Ray Inspection

Technology Introduction

Molybdenum target inspection is a new digital imaging technology that combines traditional radiology technology with modern computer technology. It finally transforms the ordinary X-ray image into a digital image that can be quantized. The traditional X-ray film technology and the qualitative quality of image quality make it easier for radiologists to find suspicious malignant lesions in mammography, which is considered to be a method to improve the early detection rate of breast cancer.

Advantages

The mammography system has the characteristics of clear imaging, convenient and quick inspection operation, and small radiation dose. The instrument can accurately detect the shape, size, density, and nature of breast hyperplasia, lesions, masses, and calcifications. It can accurately judge and identify calcifications of breast lesions that cannot be identified by color Doppler ultrasound, and is known as the “gold standard” for international breast disease examination.

As a non-invasive method of examination, mammary gland Molybdenum target X-Ray inspection has a relatively small pain in the examination of the breast. The images retained are available for comparison before and after, regardless of the limit of age or body shape. Mammography has now become a routine breast disease examination with a sensitivity of 82% to 89% for breast cancer and a specificity of 87% to 94%.

Molybdenum target mammograms of a patient.
Molybdenum target mammograms of a patient. (a) and (b) are molybdenum target mammograms of the patient’s left breast from the craniocaudal (CC) and mediolateral oblique (MLO) views, respectively, while (c) and (d) are molybdenum target mammograms of the patient’s right breast from the CC and MLO views, respectively. Sun, Lilei & Jie, Wen & Wang, Junqian & Zhao, Yong & Zhang, Bob & Wu, Jian & xu, Yong. (2022). Two‐view attention‐guided convolutional neural network for mammographic image classification. CAAI Transactions on Intelligence Technology. n/a-n/a. 10.1049/cit2.12096. 

Unique value

1 It can be used as a relatively non-invasive method of examination, and it can fully and accurately reflect the structure of the entire breast.

2 Molybdenum target inspection can be used to observe the effects of various physiological factors (such as menstrual cycle, pregnancy, lactation, economic status and endocrine changes) on the mammary gland structure, and can be used for dynamic observation.

3 Benign lesions and malignant tumors of the breast are relatively reliably identified.

4 Breast cancer can be detected early, and even occult breast cancer that is not clinically detectable can be detected.

5 According to the Molybdenum target inspection, some precancerous lesions can be found and can be followed up for observation.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Mammary gland Molybdenum target X-Ray inspection is currently the first choice and the easiest and most reliable non-invasive detection method to diagnose breast diseases. It is relatively less painful, easy to operate, and has high resolution.

Stanford Advanced Materials (SAM) Corporation is a global supplier of various sputtering targets such as metals, alloys, oxides, and ceramic materials which are widely used in the medical industry.  We will regularly update knowledge and interesting stories of sputtering targets on our website. If you are interested, please visit https://www.sputtertargets.net/ for more information.

Metal Molybdenum Target Used in Mobile Phone LCD Screen

Nowadays, mobile phones have become the most indispensable thing for the masses. Mobile phone displays are also becoming more and more high-end, such as full-screen designs, small bang designs, and so on.

One of the most important steps in making a mobile phone LCD screen is thin film coating, using magnetron sputtering to sputter the molybdenum target onto the liquid crystal glass to form a Mo thin film. Molybdenum thin films have the advantages of high melting point, high electrical conductivity, low specific impedance, good corrosion resistance and good environmental performance. Compared with the chromium film, the specific impedance and film stress of the molybdenum film are only half of that.

As an advanced film material preparation technology, sputtering has two characteristics of “high speed” and “low temperature”. It concentrates ions into a high-speed ion stream in a vacuum to bombard a solid surface. The kinetic energy exchange between the ions and the atoms on the solid surface causes the atoms on the solid surface to leave the target and deposit on the surface of the substrate to form a nano (or micro) film. The bombarded solid is a material for depositing a thin film by sputtering, which is called a sputtering target.

mobile phone lcd screen

In the electronics industry, molybdenum sputtering targets are mainly used for flat panel displays, electrodes and wiring materials for thin film solar cells, and barrier materials for semiconductors. These are based on its high melting point, high electrical conductivity, low specific impedance, good corrosion resistance, and good environmental performance.

Molybdenum used in components of LCDs can greatly improve the brightness, contrast, color, and life of the LCD. One of the major applications for molybdenum sputtering targets in the flat panel display industry is in the TFT-LCD field.

In addition to the flat panel display industry, with the development of the new energy industry, the application of molybdenum sputtering targets on thin film solar photovoltaic cells is also increasing. The molybdenum sputtering target mainly forms a CIGS (Copper Indium Gallium Selenide) thin-film battery electrode layer by sputtering. Among them, molybdenum is at the bottom of the solar cell, and as a back contact of the solar cell. It plays an important role in the nucleation, growth, and morphology of the CIGS thin film crystal.

For more information, please visit https://www.samaterials.com/.

Classification of Molybdenum Target Materials

Molybdenum sputtering targets perform the same as their source material (pure molybdenum or molybdenum alloy). Molybdenum is a metallic element mainly used in steel, where it improves the strength, hardness, weldability and toughness of alloys, as well as high temperature and corrosion resistance. Molybdenum targets are one of the important sputtering materials and are used in aerospace, semiconductor, solar and many other applications.

Different Shapes of Sputtering Target
Different Shapes of Sputtering Target

Classify by Shape of Molybdenum Target

According to the shape of the target, the molybdenum target can be divided into square molybdenum target, circular molybdenum target, molybdenum plate target, rotatory molybdenum target, and molybdenum tube target.

The square molybdenum target has the characteristics of high melting point, high electrical conductivity, low impedance, good corrosion resistance and good environmental performance. It is the most widely used planar molybdenum target.

The circular molybdenum target, or the disc molybdenum target, also has a wide range of applications, which can form films on various types of substrates, and these films can be widely used in electronic components and electronic products.

Molybdenum plate target common thickness is 0.09 inch ~ 3 inch and the surface shows silver-gray metallic luster. Common Specifications (mm) is BCM = 9.9 (0.3-10) (60-400) 800 or bigger.

The rotatory molybdenum target is a rotatable sputtering target that is usually cylindrical and has a fixed magnet so that it will rotate at a low speed during operation.

The length of the molybdenum tube target is generally ≤3000mmm, and the outer diameter is ≤250mm. The wall thickness is 3-25 mm and the flatness is 0.1 mm. In addition, its shape is tubular and the surface shows a silver metallic luster.

Classify by Applications of Molybdenum Target

According to its application, the molybdenum target can be divided into the X-ray molybdenum target, the coated molybdenum target, and etc. Stanford Advanced Materials offers a wide range of high performance, high quality molybdenum targets.

Coated molybdenum target has good properties, including excellent high temperature performance, high temperature physical strength, high elastic modulus, excellent thermal conductivity and corrosion resistance and other properties, so commonly used in the field of coatings, as coating materials.

X-ray molybdenum targets are commonly used in the medical field for breast examination of women. X-ray mammography as a non-invasive method can more fully and accurately reflect the structure of the entire breast.

If you have any interest in molybdenum metal targets, please visit our website at https://www.sputtertargets.net/.

Seven Sputtering Targets and Their applications

Tantalum is used as a barrier layer on silicon wafers for semiconductor production, and tantalum is used in all modern electronic products. Mobile phones, DVD and Blu-ray players, laptops, etc. Car electronics and even game consoles contain tantalum.

Niobium is commonly used in electronic products and its properties are similar to tantalum. Niobium has corrosion resistance due to its oxide film and is considered a superconductor.

Titanium has the characteristics of light weight and corrosion resistance, and can be used in various conventional products including watches, notebook computers and bicycles. Titanium is commonly used for wear resistance and aesthetic design, but can also be used for semiconductor and optical coatings.

Read more: Everything You Need to Know About Titanium Sputtering Target

Tungsten film is a decorative coating, due to its thermal, physical and mechanical properties (such as high melting point
And thermal conductivity) and widely used.

Molybdenum has a lower density and a consistent price, and can be used to replace tungsten. It is usually used to coat solar panel cells.

black and white solar panels

It is often used as an insulator for semiconductors, as well as surface hardness and protective layer. As an element with a high dielectric constant, it can improve the performance of certain electronic devices.

This target material is most commonly used in the production of silicon solar cells.

What are the advantages of carbon fiber composite materials used in aeroplanes?

Carbon fiber is a kind of special fiber mainly composed of carbon element and generally contains more than 90% carbon. Carbon fiber has the characteristics of high-temperature resistance, friction resistance, electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and corrosion resistance to general carbon materials. However, unlike ordinary carbon materials, its shape has significant anisotropy, and it shows strong strength along the fiber axis.

With its own unique advantages, carbon fiber reinforced composites have also been widely used in the aircraft manufacturing industry. Especially for smaller airplanes, carbon fiber composites are the best choice.

As a kind of carbon fiber, carbon fiber composite material has a wide range of applications in many fields due to its characteristics of high strength, lightweight, stable chemical properties, high-temperature resistance, and strong durability. Applying it to the fuselage and wings of an airplane can reduce the weight of the airplane by about 40%, and its crawling ability can be increased by 1.8 times compared with the airplane of ordinary materials.

Compared with military and civil aircraft, model aircraft are smaller in size, shorter in-flight operation time, and the working environment is relatively better. Applying carbon fiber composite materials to model aircraft can increase their service life, so they can be applied to the harsh environments.

aircraft concord

The application of carbon fiber composite materials to airplane aircraft can not only reduce the mass of the airplane but also increase the strength tolerance range of the airplane aircraft to a certain extent. The fuselage and propeller made of carbon fiber composite materials reduce the weight of the airplane while increasing its strength, thereby reducing its volume.

With the continuous development of the aerospace industry, the demand for carbon fiber composites is increasing. At the same time, people have put forward higher requirements for the quality of carbon fiber composite materials, which in a certain sense promotes the development of carbon fiber composite materials in the direction of multifunctionality, low cost and high performance.

Compared with glass fiber, the application cost of carbon fiber is also relatively high, and it is more difficult to promote and use it in a wide range. From the current situation, the price of carbon fiber materials has not only declined, but also shown an upward trend. To solve this problem, new processes must be studied to reduce the cost of carbon fiber composites.

Carbon fiber materials can also be made into the carbon sputtering target for aviation coatings. Stanford Advanced Materials provides high-quality sputtering targets and evaporation materials. Please visit https://www.sputtertargets.net for more information.

Silicon Wafer: 4 Types of Wet Cleaning Method

After the silicon wafer is processed by different processes such as slicing, chamfering, grinding, surface treatment, polishing, and epitaxy, the surface has been seriously stained. The purpose of cleaning the Si wafer is to remove particles, metal ions and organic substances on the surface of the silicon wafer.

Semiconductor-Silicon-Wafers

Wet cleaning uses chemical solvents with strong corrosive and oxidizing properties, such as H2SO4, H2O2, DHF, NH3•H2O, etc. The impurity particles on the surface of the silicon wafer react with the solvent to form soluble substances and gases. In order to improve the cleaning effect, it is possible to use mega-acoustic, heating, vacuum and other technical means, and finally use ultra-pure water to clean the surface of the silicon wafer to obtain a silicon wafer that meets the cleanliness requirements.

There are several methods for wet cleaning the silicon semiconductor wafer:

RCA Cleaning for Silicon Wafer

Kern et al. proposed the RCA cleaning method in 1965. According to the SPM, DHF, SC-1, and SC-2 sequences, the RCA cleaning method basically satisfies the requirements of most wafer cleanliness. Cleaning the silicon wafers by this method not only improves the cleaning efficiency, reduces the cost, saves time, obtains excellent surface cleanliness, but also improves the electrochemical performance of the Si wafer.

Ultrasonic Cleaning for Silicon Wafer

Ultrasonic cleaning is a cleaning method widely used in the semiconductor industry. The method has the advantages of good cleaning effect, simple operation, and can be removed for complicated devices and containers; but the method also has the disadvantages of high noise and easy breakage of the transducer.

This method can effectively remove organic, particulate, and metal ion impurities on the surface of the silicon wafer by utilizing the mechanical action of high-frequency sound waves, the cavitation effect of the solution, and the complexation reaction of chemical reagents. Using a similar method, BongKyun et al. used a 0.83 MHz megasonic wave to clean the silicon wafer, which is more excellent and can remove particulate impurities below 0.3 μm.

Silicon Wafer Wet Cleaning
Silicon Wafer Wet Cleaning

Double Flow Spray for Silicon Wafer

The dual-flow atomizing nozzle cleans the silicon wafer by using a nozzle to scan the silicon wafer back and forth with the rotating arm, and the silicon wafer rotates clockwise. The dual-flow nozzle uses a high-pressure, high-speed jet of gas to impinge a vulgar flow of liquid, destroying the surface tension of the liquid and the van der Waals bond and hydrogen bond between the liquid molecules, causing the liquid to atomize and become nanometer-sized droplets, which are ejected at high speed through the nozzle under the action of high pressure air.

Ozone Microbubble Method for Silicon Wafer

The high activity and strong oxidizing properties of ozone can remove organic and particulate impurities on the surface of the Si wafers. Ozone is dissolved in water to form a highly reactive OH group, and the OH group chemically reacts with the organic substance to remove organic impurities on the surface of the silicon semiconductor wafer. At the same time, the surface of the silicon product is covered with an atomic-level smooth oxide film, which effectively isolates the re-adsorption of impurities.

This method has an excellent cleaning effect, basically removes organic and particulate impurities, and meets the requirements of general silicon wafer cleanliness. At the same time, ozone microbubble cleaning produces less polluting waste and high cleaning efficiency, and can be used for cleaning large-scale circuits, silicon wafers and LEDs.

For more information, please visit https://www.sputtertargets.net/.

Sputter Targets for the Chip Industry

Every era has some materials to follow the mainstream trend to become the leader in the industry. Under the current situation, the development of the chip industry as a high-tech commanding point has important strategic significance, and the sputter target is a necessary raw material for the manufacture of ultra-large-scale integrated circuits. Therefore, the sputtering target material may be representative of the material emerging from this mainstream trend.

In the chip industry, which is a high-tech high point, sputter targets are essential raw materials for the manufacture of very large scale integrated circuits. Very large scale integrated circuits are those with more than 100,000 components integrated on a single chip, or more than 10,000 gates. With this technology, an electronic subsystem and even the entire electronic system can be “integrated” on one chip to complete various functions such as information collection, processing, and storage. What is repeatedly used in the manufacturing process of ultra-large-scale integrated circuits is the sputtering process belonging to physical vapor deposition (PVD) technology, which is also one of the main techniques for preparing electronic thin film materials.

The principle of the sputtering process is to utilize the ions generated by the ion source to accelerate the polymerization into a high-speed ion current in a vacuum to bombard the solid surface, and the kinetic energy exchange between the ions on the surface of the ion and the solid surface causes the atoms on the solid surface to leave the target and deposit on the substrate to form a nano/micro film.

The bombarded solid is the sputtering target, which is simply like a printing mold. The quality of the target plays a crucial role in the performance of the film, which directly determines the quality and performance of downstream semiconductor chips, flat panel displays, solar cells and other electronic devices or optical components. Therefore, the sputter target is the key raw material in the whole process.

Sputtering targets can be classified according to their chemical composition, geometry and field of application. Targets with different compositions (aluminum, copper, stainless steel, titanium, nickel targets, etc.) can be divided into different film systems (superhard, wear-resistant, anti-corrosion alloy films, etc.); if divided according to their application fields, they can be divided into It is recording medium targets, semiconductor targets, display film targets, superconducting targets, and optical targets.

The target production process includes two processes of “material purification” and “target preparation”. During the purification process, it is necessary to ensure the reduction of impurity content in the target, and the preparation process needs to ensure the surface level of the sputter coater target.

Sputtering targets for high-end applications have very high technical thresholds and are very complex to prepare. First of all, it is necessary to carry out process design according to performance requirements, and then carry out repeated plastic deformation, heat treatment, precise control of grain, crystal orientation and other indicators, and then through welding, machining, cleaning and drying, vacuum packaging and other processes.

For more information, please visit https://www.sputtertargets.net/.

What are the Uses of Metal Sputtering Targets?

What is the “target”?

The target refers to the target material. They can be used in high-energy laser weapons; different power densities, different output waveforms, and different wavelengths of lasers can have different killing effects when interacting with different targets. Another major use for them is for sputtering in physical film coating.

What is the “sputtering target”?

Magnetron sputtering coating is a new type of physical vapor deposition method, and its advantages in many aspects are quite obvious compared with the earlier evaporation coating method. As a relatively mature technology that has been developed, magnetron sputtering has been applied in many fields. Sputtering targets serve as source materials in magnetron sputtering coatings.

sputtering target in lcd

What are the application areas?

1: Microelectronics field

2: Target for flat panel display

3: Targets for storage technology

Sputtering materials are mainly used in electronics and information industries, such as integrated circuits, information storage, liquid crystal displays, laser memories, electronic control devices, etc.; they can also be used in the field of glass coating; they can also be applied to wear-resistant materials, high temperature corrosion resistance, high-grade decorative products and other industries.

The technological development trend of target materials is closely related to the development trend of thin-film technology in the downstream application industry. As technology in the application industry improves on film products or components, target technology should also change. In recent years, flat panel displays (FPDs) have largely replaced the market for computer monitors and televisions, which are mainly cathode ray tubes (CRTs), and will greatly increase the technical and market demand for ITO targets.

Stanford Advanced Materials (SAM) Corporation is a global supplier of various sputtering targets such as metals, alloys, oxides, ceramic materials. For more information, please visit https://www.sputtertargets.net/.