Power Supply-Related Methods for Crazing Arc Defects Elimination in Large Area Coating
(Room Room 104-B)
30 Apr 19
9:40 AM
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10:00 AM
Tracks:
Heuréka! Post-Deadline Recent Developments
Crazing arc defects which occur on the surface of insulating materials during sputtering deposition damage the product generating significant waste and financial losses in production. Especially in the case of Large Area Coating (LAC) for architectural glass manufacturing each occurrence of crazing hinders continuity of 24/7 production, and in extreme cases forces production cycle to stop before scheduled system maintenance. In the case of sputtering deposition of functional coatings on glass, crazing has been reported to occur at different stages of the multilayer structure deposition. Furthermore, the discussion about anti-crazing measures was started again as the problem returned with the market tendency to exchange the MF technology with Bipolar power supplies.
The data presented in this work will provide evidence that crazing arc defects can be eliminated also when a Bipolar type power supply is used in LAC coating production. Thus two main factors determining successful mitigation of crazing effect by Bipolar units will be discussed: (i) appropriate selection of the operation mode of the power supply, and (ii) application of self-learning algorithm for fine-tuning of generator-related plasma discharge parameters.