Sputtering is the Preferred Vacuum Deposition Technique

Sputtering is a physical vapor deposition (PVD) method of depositing the evaporated target material onto the surface of the substrate forming a thin film layer.
Sputtering is the preferred vacuum deposition technique used by manufacturers of semiconductors, CDs, disk drives, and optical devices. It is used extensively in the semiconductor industry to deposit thin films of various materials in integrated circuit processing. Thin anti-reflection coatings on glass for optical applications are also deposited by sputtering. Sputtered films exhibit excellent uniformity, density, purity and adhesion.
Several types of sputtering processes exist, including: ion beam, diode, and magnetron sputtering.

In the sputtering process substrates are placed into the vacuum chamber, and are pumped down to their process pressure. Sputtering starts when a negative charge is applied to the target material (material to be deposited), causing a plasma or glow discharge. Positive charged gas ions generated in the plasma region are attracted to the negative biased target plate at a very high speed. This collision creates a momentum transfer and ejects atomic size particles from the target. These particles traverse the chamber and are deposited as a thin film onto the surface of the substrates.

The tungsten, molybdenum, titanium targets offered by Stanford Advanced Materials have the advantages of high density, high purity, high precision, homogeneous structure etc.
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Tungsten Heavy Alloy Can be Used to Balance Weights

With the density as high as 16.8~18.8g/cm3, tungsten heavy alloy has been widely used as balancing weights:

• Balancing weights in racing cars, submarines, and airplanes.
• Crankshaft balances
• Oil drilling counterweight stem
• Mobile phones, game machines oscillator
• Gyroscope in aerospace
• Fishing and golf counterweight


• The conventional processing route for tungsten heavy alloys includes mixing the desired amount of elemental powders, followed by cold pressing and liquid phase sintering to almost full density. The matrix alloy melts and takes some tungsten into solution during liquid phase processing, resulting in a microstructure through which large tungsten grains (20–60µm) are dispersed in the matrix alloy. The as-sintered material often is subjected to thermo mechanical processing by swaging and aging, which results in increased strength and hardness in the heavy alloys.

• The majority of current uses for WHAs (tungsten heavy alloys) are best satisfied with the W-Ni-Fe system. Alloys such as 93W-4.9Ni-2.lFe and 95W-4Ni-lFe represent common compositions. The addition of cobalt to a W-Ni-Fe alloy is a common approach for slight enhancement of both strength and ductility. The presence of cobalt within the alloy provides solid-solution strengthening of the binder and slightly enhanced tungsten-matrix interfacial strength. Cobalt additions of 5 to 15% of the nominal binder weight fraction arc most common.
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