our business model is to enable yours.

from the beginning, our business, our track record, our expertise, and our facilities remain uniformly focused in thin film and coating development services - never marketing/sales of equipment/tooling platforms.  Our services are provided to those organizations that are defining state-of-the-art applications in thin film devices and coating performance.  We must continually push the envelope beyond the published literature, and so have continually developed needed materials and cost performance through understanding and innovating the reactive and energetic modes of vacuum thin film processing.   bankable thin film architectures of any disruptive market value must inevitably be proven as a complex, multi-component physical system (hence, the "systems" in our name).  The applications we address take the form of multilayer architectures incorporating dielectric-dielectric, metal-semiconductor, dielectric-semiconductor, intermetallic, and metal-dielectric interfaces, where performance metrics push the envelope; performance requirements that cannot simply be addressed through utilizing the standard, pre-installed recipes available in turn-key thin film deposition systems.   a long history in reactive plasma processes.  Energetic deposition methods in the vacuum deposition sciences are not only required for depositing dense refractory compounds.  Our more highly controlled versions of energetic deposition methods are are very often critical for the metrics of high reliability, product performance, and high throughput. in many established commercial multilayer designs that required optimum field performance, adhesion, and run-to-run reproducibility.  Working daily with a variety of industrially relevant, high-throughput, vacuum deposition processes for material compounds in and for our customers' newest product lines, we are accustomed to the metrics of commercial products, as such thin film development work is, from the beginning, our bread and butter (i.e., not chasing government grants, not selling vacuum systems, not refurbishing equipment). we've provided new process development in applications ranging from the deceptively simple to the complex: from high-throughput anti-reflection coatings to high-temperature diffusion barriers for corrosive environments; from neutron-imaging detectors to quantum-scale electronic devices.  As a matter of historical record, our introduced developments and insights that improve these film architectures have fundamentally changed the accepted product specification of entire industrial sectors.

 

(synopsis)

expertise:   
We have been, for 25+ years, dedicated to providing innovative source technologies and process environments for reactive physical vapor deposition (PVD) process development, applied to active thin-film devices, surface / interface tailoring, optical multilayers, and general thin film prototyping;  in-house services: metal oxides, nitrides, fluorides, multi-layers, dichroic filters, high-temperature diffusion barriers, moisture barriers, protected silver and aluminum; various reactive sputtering tool layouts are available for process development.  We have extensive expertise in diffusion barriers, as well as reactive formation of multi-component compounds/phases (perovskites, garnets, spinels, etc) of constituents having disparate vapor pressures and heats of oxidation. 

facilities:  multiple multi-source reactive PVD systems re-configurable for various deposition modes and source-substrate interactions; in-house metrology, microscopy, VUV-Vis-NIR-MIR spectroscopy, x-ray diffraction, in-situ mass spectrometry, in-situ spetrophotometry, pre-deposition and post-deposition treatments, reliability testing facilities, and machine-shop facilities.

thin film development: 
Whereas, we primarily specialize in new thin film materials development challenges, particularly in optical, optoelectronic, electrochemical, and thermochemical applications, past applications served include a wide range of thin film materials challenges.  

These applications include thin film batteries, solar reflectors and applications, optical filters, optical reflectors, optical cavities, pellicles, solid-oxide gas separation, solid-oxide fuel cells, environmental barriers, moisture barriers, high-temperature diffusion barriers, tribological coatings, non-volatile memory, ferroelectrics, piezoelectrics, optical garnets, low-thermal budget processes, hermetic seals, diffusion bonds, anti-reflection coatings, and many others. 

substrates: 
we are accustomed to working with unconventional substrate shapes and substrate materials.

location: 

Coastside, Bay Area, California; in San Mateo county, between San Francisco and the San Jose / Santa Clara / Silicon Valley area.