[labnetwork] Silicon ebeam evaporation

[Christopher Balicki]

Hi All,


Hope you are all well and keeping safe.


We have received some interest from our users to provide a silicon evaporation process. Based on initial investigation, it appears that thermal evaporation is pretty much impossible and that ebeam evaporation could yield some results. That said, molten silicon is corrosive and pretty much alloys with anything it touches. If we were to use a crucible liner, the top candidate liner materials are copper, tantalum, and tungsten, however, liner lifetime and performance is unknown. And if we were to evaporate directly in the copper hearth, this would permanently assign the pocket to silicon, and potentially necessitate a hearth replacement at some point.


Our top concerns are to (of course) maintain the safety and reliability of our PVD systems for our whole userbase. A silicon evaporation process would have to be robust and not cause excessive equipment downtime.


Any advice and/or recommendations based on experience would be highly appreciated!


Cheers,

Chris


Christopher Balicki
Fabrication and Prototyping Manager | 4D LABS
Simon Fraser University | TASC 2
8888 University Dr., Burnaby, B.C. V5A 1S6
T: 778 782 9322 | F: 778 782 3765 | www.4dlabs.ca<http://www.4dlabs.ca/>
Facebook<https://www.facebook.com/4dlabs/> | Twitter<https://twitter.com/4D_LABS> | LinkedIn<https://www.linkedin.com/company/sfu-4d-labs/about/>

[1585691682058]
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