How to evaporate metals in AJA
The genius remote
The genius remote is used to control the coils at the e-beam and manipulate the beam.
There are two options:
- Left joystick: controls the amplitude (how much the beam oscillates)
- Right joystick: controls the beam position (where the beam is located or where is the centre of the oscillation)
Evaporation of metals
The following instructions are based on the manufacturers (| Lesker and | Thermionics)
Aluminium
Directly copied from Thermionics website. Will be adjusted according to our SOPs
Aluminum (Al) is highly reactive when molten. Al will react with all liner materials. Al also getters Oxygen to form oxide layers if any oxygen is present during deposition. Aluminum Oxide (Al2O3) has a much higher melting point and vapor pressure when compared to Al (2,045C M.P., 1550C V.P. for Al2O3 compared to 660C M.P., 1,010 V.P. for Al). Further Al2O3 is an excellent insulator compared to Al which is a fairly good conductor. These properties make electron beam evaporation of Al more complicated than most metals. When evaporating Aluminum DO NOT SWEEP the beam! Sweeping the beam produces more heat closer to the liner / material interface. This will greatly speed up the reaction process. You can sweep to initially melt down the charge if needed (larger crucibles will require this- a 2.2cc typically will not). Place the beam as close to the center of the crucible as possible during evaporation. Slowly ramp power up and down. It should take 1-3 minutes to reach evaporation and after finishing the run, you should come back to a low power level (20-30 mA) and soak for 30-60 seconds to “cool down” the melt. This will reduce liner breakage from expansion.Do not overfill liner. Fill the liner 50%-70% (when melted). Aluminum will “climb” the walls of a liner and if it spills over and touches the water cooled crucible the liner will break. In larger sources you can use a liner inside a liner to eliminate this possibility. Overfilling a liner is the #1 cause of failure with AL.
Gold
Directly copied from Lekser website. Will be adjusted according to our SOPs
We recommend sweeping the e-beam and ramping power to fully melt the material before depositing films. Once melted, a focused e-beam can be used for the deposition process. With an evaporation temperature of ~1,400°C and a base pressure for evaporation of 10-6 Torr or lower, we anticipate the deposition rate to be 1-5 Angstroms per second.
Platinum
This section is currently blank and will be filled in the future
Chromium
This section is currently blank and will be filled in the future
Silicon Oxide
This section is currently blank and will be filled in the future