Accessories

System Accessories

The HEX series is a truly modular system and therefore a wide range of accessories can be integrated  when the initial system is configured, or simply ordered as an extra item at a later date, if and when the coating or research requirements change.

Some of the thin film system options are listed below, but please Contact us if you have any specific requirements and we will be happy to design a configuration to suit your requirements.

QCM –  Deposition Thickness & Rate Monitors

Quartz Crystal Monitoring measures a mass variation per unit area by measuring the change in frequency of a quartz crystal resonator. The resonance is disturbed by the addition or removal of a small mass due to oxide growth/decay or film deposition at the surface of the acoustic resonator.

The HEX QCM  enables the monitoring of deposition rate and thickness for all of the sources in the components range and is available in both manual and fully automated versions.

qcm no bkgrd2

Sample, Viewport and Instrument Shutters

All of the deposition components and sample stage options for the HEX series come with shutters in order to control the deposition of materials. They can be either manually operated or there is also the option of adding fully automated shutters to the system, enabling full system control from a laptop, using our custom software Niobium.

System Panels

The HEX series has a wide range of side panel options for the customisation of a deposition chamber such as;

  • Viewport panels – to assist in the monitoring of the deposition process
  • Blank (chamber wall) panels
  • Gas line panels – for introducing gas into the chamber for reactive thin film deposition or post deposition annealing.
  • PLD panels – laser viewport with attachment points for focusing optics.
  • Instrument panels – for the attachment of the HEX range or deposition instruments.
  • Bespoke top and bottom panels – enabling custom sample stage and pumping options.

Spectroscopy

The HEX series can also be equipped with a spectrometer, enabling the monitoring of the absorption spectrum of plasmas or for in situ absorption spectroscopy/photo luminescence.

In-Situ MeasurementAll of the systems in the HEX series can be equipped with a selection of in-situ measurement devices for applications such as;

  • Dual band optical monitoring for thickness measurement.
  • Broadband optical monitoring for the analysis of transmission and reflection spectrums of deposited layers.
  • Spectroscopic ellipsometry for thickness and composition analysis. 

High Vacuum Load Locks

The HEX series also has the option of incorporating a high vacuum load lock. This can be pumped down in under 10 minutes and allows samples to be introduced without breaking the vacuum of the systems main chamber.

load lock

Glovebox Integration

Due to the modular nature of the thin film systems within the HEX series, they can also be  integrated into gloveboxes, allowing deposition in an inert atmosphere to eliminate the risk of oxidisation to both the target material and the thin film samples.