Physical vapor deposition
Overview
Vacuum deposition
Vacuum deposition is a family of processes used to deposit layers atom-by-atom or molecule-by-molecule at sub-atmospheric pressure on a solid surface. The layers may be as thin as one atom to millimeters thick . There may be multiple layers of different materials...
and is a general term used to describe any of a variety of methods to deposit thin film
Thin film
A thin film is a layer of material ranging from fractions of a nanometer to several micrometers in thickness. Electronic semiconductor devices and optical coatings are the main applications benefiting from thin film construction....
s by the condensation of a vaporized form of the desired film material onto various workpiece surfaces (e.g., onto semiconductor
Semiconductor
A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity due to electron flow intermediate in magnitude between that of a conductor and an insulator. This means a conductivity roughly in the range of 103 to 10−8 siemens per centimeter...
wafer
Wafer (electronics)
A wafer is a thin slice of semiconductor material, such as a silicon crystal, used in the fabrication of integrated circuits and other microdevices...
s). The coating method involves purely physical processes such as high temperature vacuum evaporation
Evaporation
Evaporation is a type of vaporization of a liquid that occurs only on the surface of a liquid. The other type of vaporization is boiling, which, instead, occurs on the entire mass of the liquid....
with subsequent condensation, or plasma sputter bombardment rather than involving a chemical reaction at the surface to be coated as in chemical vapor deposition
Chemical vapor deposition
Chemical vapor deposition is a chemical process used to produce high-purity, high-performance solid materials. The process is often used in the semiconductor industry to produce thin films. In a typical CVD process, the wafer is exposed to one or more volatile precursors, which react and/or...
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