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Coating of conducting plastic with TiN in vacuum microwave plasma

 

I'm researching if it is possible to coat a conducting plastic with titanium nitride in a vacuum microwave plasma oven. At 2.45GHz, there are no electrodes inside. We will activate the material first with O2 and CF4 gas. in vacuum. The conducting plastic melts at 150 °C.

Preferably we would like to coat this plastic in this microwave chamber, maybe with different gasses.

Can this be done, if so how can we do this. Or do we need another application for this type of coating.

Rikus Woortmeijer B.Sc.
TNO-MEP - Apeldoorn, The Netherlands

As I understand from your description, you have an electrically conductive plastic that can withstand temp up to 150 C. You can activate the plastic surface using O2 and/or CF4. And you would like to deposit TiN. As I see it, you have to bring in titanium and nitrogen somehow in the system to form TiN.

Mandar Sunthankar
- Fort Collins, Colorado

Microwave power can be used for deposition or ion source creation, however, it is typically done through ECR ion sources. You would want the base TiN material species available for ion impingement in the ECR generator. A microwave oven is not practical for this application unless you do significant engineering (i.e. guide microwave energy to the reaction chamber, magnetically bias for cyclotron resonance, etc.).

A better bet is to reactively sputter in a standard sputter chamber (ex. 13.56MHz RF source matched to a Ti target in vacuum chamber with partial pressures of Ar and N2). Your big issue will be heat and warpage or melting of the substrate. Of course, material deposition thickness will affect heat added to the substrate.

Good luck.

Jeff Albom
- El Granada, California, USA