Research

Partnerships & Collaboration

SVS have always had an active interest in research and development. In June 2000 SVS established a dedicated R & D laboratory to investigate new deposition techniques. This laboratory is equipped with a 10,000 class cleanroom, electron beam evaporation system (with 6 inch wafer capability), two sputter systems, a Lambda 9 Photospectrometer and an Ellipsometer. Also additional access to a variety of other analytical equipment, including SEM., XPS, AES, SIMS & RAMAN

In January 2001 SVS were awarded a 2 year TCS partnership (#3173) with Loughborough University, for the "Development of processes and systems to coat polymer substrates with complex materials at low temperatures using PVD and reactive sputtering". The culmination of this work was the development of the SVS Blue Diamond DLC process.

The scheme was awarded a grade 1 Certificate of Excellence, the highest award available on a TCS scheme. Keen to further develop, SVS employed Chris Aitken, the TCS Associate upon the completion of the scheme and he now heads the Development & Applications lab.

On completion of the first scheme, SVS were awarded a second TCS scheme (#4101) in August 2003, with the appointment of Dr Adrian Walters as the new TCS Associate. Adrian’s project is "To commercialise and develop a novel low-temperature deposition process by designing and constructing a large-scale coating facility suitable for processing a wider range of materials".

Adrian has previous commercial experience managing a thin-film coatings lab producing anti-reflection coatings by ion-assisted electron beam deposition.

Current Work

The SVS Applications & Developments Team are currently developing reactively sputtered silicon based thin-films for optical coating applications. Results indicate that the processes could provide a serious challenge to established e-beam deposition techniques.

Products

SVS have released 2 commercial processes in the past 2 years: Blue Diamond; a Diamond-Like Carbon coating, used for its low friction & high hardness properties, and a Silicon Oxynitride based coating, that has uses in both the optic and gas barrier markets.

Application Notes/Process samples

Applications notes and Process samples are available on request: please contact us for details.