Thin Film Coatings Welcome to the world of plasma, ion bombardment and high vacuum. The world of exotic reagents such as organometallics. The world of complex interference between nanolayers. Welcome to the world of thin film coatings. At the R&D Centre, we invent the thin film coatings of tomorrow and make improvements to existing products. |  |
Coatings are changing our life every day. They make life comfortable in buildings, by reducing energy losses during winter and preventing heat build-up during summer. For the same reasons, coatings reduce our impact on the environment. The coatings are also used intensively in cars where windshields and sunroofs are becoming increasingly large. Coatings make your life safer, by preventing frosting and fogging of your vehicle windshield. Coatings prevent from burning your fingers, by keeping the door of your kitchen stove cool. Coatings are high-tech, as part of touch panels or LCD display. Coatings are an essential part in photovoltaic cells.
Thin coatings on glass are produced by chemical vapour deposition (CVD) and magnetron sputtering. The coatings are made up as many as 20 or even more layers, each 1 to 200 nm thick. With so many thin layers, understanding of interference and interfaces is critical. Take the lead if you are a talented physicist, physical chemist or engineer!
CVD is a very challenging field for chemical engineers, chemists and physical chemists. Be part of the excitement, and run a process producing 500 T of coated glass per day using multiple chemical reactors at temperatures ranging from 400 to 800°C!
CVD technology involves the use of chemical reagents, in particular organometallics, vapour phase transformation, kinetics of decomposition on hot glass surfaces (sometimes in the presence of other reagents), and purification. The areas of expertise required in this field are:
- Physics and chemistry of surfaces
- Solid state physics
- Surface analysis techniques
- Electrochemistry
- Materials science
- Optics
- Corrosion