RE: Vacuum chamber upgrade!

Essentially, what physical vapor deposition consists of is the vaporization of some kind of material and then the condensation of that material on a substrate. There are many ways of vaporizing materials but the two most common ways are sputtering and thermal evaporation.

With sputtering, the atoms are kicked out of their substrate due to collision energy from ions. Essentially, a plasma is created near a target(the material to be sputtered) and there is a very strong magnetic field present. Whenever the plasma forms, it gets directed by the magnetic fields to collide with the surface of the target material. Typically, this is done under extremely low pressure Argon or Xenon since they have a high molecular mass and low reactivity. When one of these atoms collide with the surface atoms of the target, they impart their kinetic energy onto a few atoms. These atoms then ricochet off of atoms below them in the target structure. Some of the atoms gain enough kinetic energy to leave the surface and break free from the main metal body. These atoms then fly away and outward from the target. If you are to put a coating target(the item you want to deposit on) in the path of those atoms, they will form a thin film on the surface. This method relies on kinetic recoil energy to kick atoms free.

The thermal method uses thermal energy to evaporate or boil the target material to kick the atoms out. Besides the method of vaporization, the process in which the coating target is coated is exactly the same. One of the methods for heating is an electron beam. The electron beam is directed at the target and heats it up to boiling which kicks out vaporized target material. Another method is a simple hot tungsten filament that heats another target material and vaporizes it. There are other methods for heating the target but the idea is essentially the same.

I am going to link you to some Wikipedia articles that I think may be beneficial!

Sputtering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputtering

E-Beam: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron-beam_physical_vapor_deposition

Thermal Evap: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporation_(deposition)

Hopefully this helps!