System Architecture and Key Components

01 Vacuum System

It provides an oil-free, high-vacuum environment and consists of a vacuum chamber, a molecular pump, and a mechanical pump unit, serving as the clean foundation for coating processes.

02 Electron Gun Evaporation Source

The core evaporation component employs a focused electron beam to bombard the crucible target, enabling highly efficient evaporation of refractory metals and oxides.

03 Ion Source Assembly

A high-energy ion beam (radio-frequency ion source) is provided to bombard the thin film during deposition, significantly enhancing its density.

04 Planetary Substrate Holder

By combining orbital and rotational motions, uniformity and consistency of thin-film thickness across large‑area substrate surfaces are ensured.

05 Intelligent Measurement and Control Terminal

Integrates a QCM thin-film thickness monitoring system, an optical‑based thickness monitoring system, a vacuum gauge, and MFC flow control to enable digital closed-loop management of process parameters.

Vacuum coating chamber: the core reaction zone integrating a planetary holder and an evaporation source.

QCM Film Thickness Monitor: Real-time monitoring of the deposition rate and thickness of nanoscale thin films.

Systemic Synergy: By leveraging digital collaboration across subsystems, the process achieves precise control from material evaporation to thin-film modification, ensuring superior optical and mechanical properties—key enablers for the fabrication of high‑end functional thin films.

Collaborative Working Mechanism

Electron-beam evaporation and ion-beam-assisted deposition are integrated within a single vacuum chamber, enabling precise control over thin-film growth through the spatiotemporal coupling of “material supply” and “energy modification.”

01 Electron Gun: The “Material Source” for Thin-Film Growth

As the core evaporation unit, it employs a high-energy electron beam to bombard the target material, causing it to rapidly heat and vaporize, thereby generating a high-purity atomic flux that provides a continuous and stable source of material for thin-film deposition.

02 Ion Source: A Performance-Optimized “Modifier”

By bombarding the film surface with ion beams from the side and at oblique angles, energy injection and momentum transfer alter the atomic deposition mechanism, thereby effectively enhancing the film’s density, adhesion, and mechanical properties.

Synergy: Dual-source synchronous deposition not only ensures high film‑forming efficiency but also enables active control over the thin film’s microstructure, making it a key technological pathway for fabricating high‑quality functional thin films.

Figure: Internal Structure and Operating Principle of the E‑beam+IAD Vacuum Coating System

Key Process Parameters and Performance Control

E‑beam+IAD technology, with its highly controllable process window, enables precise “tuning” of thin-film optical and mechanical properties by finely adjusting deposition, ion-beam, and gas parameters.

Three Core Process Parameters

By precisely tuning deposition parameters such as ion energy and substrate temperature, as well as in‑beam parameters like ion energy and incidence angle, and by adjusting the flow rates of reactive and process gases, one establishes the fundamental dimensions for performance control.

Continuous Regulation of Stress States and Failure Suppression

By precisely tuning the ion-beam energy, the film stress can be continuously adjusted from tensile to compressive, effectively mitigating thermal and lattice mismatches between the film and the substrate. This fundamentally suppresses the risks of film cracking and delamination, thereby significantly enhancing the device’s long-term stability and service life.

Key factors affecting performance

The ion source voltage, which controls the primary beam screen grid (U), has a weight of 0.616; the Ar gas flow rate determines the surface film roughness (Ra), with a weight of 0.582; together, these two factors govern the optical and surface quality of the thin film.

The surface morphology of the thin film under atomic force microscopy directly reveals the influence of process parameters on surface roughness.

Performance Comparison and Quantitative Improvement

Horizontal Comparison of Core Process Performance

Quantitative improvement in key performance indicators

Temperature stability improved by a factor of 2.4

The spectral drift of the TiO₂/SiO₂ filter has been reduced from 0.29 nm/°C to 0.12 nm/°C, significantly mitigating the impact of ambient temperature fluctuations on optical accuracy and perfectly meeting the requirements of precision instruments.

Visible light transmittance exceeds 89%.

In the fabrication of transparent conductive films, an average visible-light transmittance exceeding 89% is achieved, balancing high electrical conductivity with excellent optical transparency, making it widely suitable for high-end displays and optoelectronic devices.

Laser‑damage resistance has been significantly enhanced.

The dual enhancement of thin-film density and adhesion significantly boosts the laser‑induced damage threshold (LIDT), enabling the component to withstand higher‑power laser irradiation and thereby extending the service life of optical elements.