SummaryWhy is Reactive Sputtering important? – Bill Sproul, the inventor of mass spectrometer based reactive sputtering process control technology, stated in his 2005 review paper, “the use of reactive sputtering has proliferated, particularly over the past decade. It is used extensively by manufacturers of coated architectural glass, roll or web [...]

In prior years, the only metal scrap that was recyclable was the old stalwarts of the scrap business. These items were solid pieces of metal that were segregated into their various grades by eye. Trained sorters differentiated their metals by a variety of Alchemic methods including taking a grinding wheel [...]

The sputtering process is the most important technique for material deposition in CIGS-manufacturing. With innovative sputtering targets CIGS producers can significantly reduce their production costs.Manufacturers of sputtering targets like PLANSEE have two approaches to reduce CIGS module manufacturing costs: In order to lower the material consumption by a better target [...]

The accuracy of the derivation of n- and k-values for an optical thin film coating material depends heavily on the accuracy of the spectrophotometric measurement data supporting the derivation. Any reflectance and/or transmittance errors will lead to errors in the resulting n- and k-values, which will in turn cause [...]

Magnetron Sputtering is a technology of high importance due to a wide variety of applications in industries such as thin film photovoltaics, semiconductor, optics, decorative coating and wear and corrosion protection. It has been observed in the past that in certain cases, when sputtering metal or ceramic materials, nodules are [...]

Zinc oxide (ZnO) is a promising material for ultraviolet (UV) light-emitting diodes (LEDs) because of its large exciton binding energy up to 60 meV and direct bandgap energy of 3.37 eV. Many techniques have been used to grow high-quality ZnO films, including molecular beam epitaxy, metal-organic chemical vapor deposition, chemical [...]

Nature provides a variety of micro and nano structures which can be used as templates for manufacturing photonic sensing surfaces. For example, surfaces replicated from the wings of certain butterfly species can absorb or reflect light over a given spectral range [1].Nowadays, nanotechnology and biomimetic technology make it possible to [...]