Specific Process Knowledge/Thin film deposition/10-pocket e-beam evaporator

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E-Beam Evaporator (10-pockets)

The 10-pocket e-beam evaporator in cleanroom A-5.

The 10-pocket electron-beam evaporator allows line-of-sight deposition of 10 different materials. Line-of-sight deposition means that only the surface of the sample facing the source directly is coated, which is useful for example for lift-off. This particular machine was purchased by Nanolab in 2023. It was made by Temescal, a company owned by FerroTec, and is very similar to the other Temescal e-beam evaporator bought by Nanolab in 2018, which we call E-beam Evaporator (Temescal).

In both Temescal e-beam evaporators, wafers are loaded into the top of the chamber, called the product chamber. This product chamber acts as a loadlock because it can be separated from the rest of the chamber by a large gate valve. Deposition will happen on all samples that are loaded together. You can load up to four 6" wafers or three 8" wafers for deposition on surfaces facing the evaporation source, or on up to one 6" wafer for tilted deposition. Using sample holder inserts, you can deposit on samples of different sizes and shapes. One material can be deposited at a time, and you can deposit many layers one after another.

Some special features of the 10-pocket system compared to the other Temescal e-beam evaporator are:

  • sample heating up to 250 °C
  • it is possible to add a low oxygen flow
  • we have silicon, silica and alumina available for deposition in this machine.

You need specific training to use these special options.

Note that you should only deposit oxides and silicon right in the afternoon of a day before a scheduled service as they can cause a lot of flakes in the machine.

The user manual, user APV, and contact information can be found in LabManager:

E Beam Evaporator (10-pockets) in LabManager

Training videos may be found here:

Training videos on Youtube


Process information

  • Acceptance Test. Describes thickness uniformity tests, side wall deposition tests, sheet resistance tests and tests of the ion source for substrate cleaning.

Materials for e-beam evaporation

These materials are available in the 10-pocket e-beam evaporator:

Most of these materials are fixed and will always be present in the machine: Al, Cr, Au, Ni, Pt, Si, Ag, and Ti. A few of them are deposited from liners and may be exchanged on request: Al2O3, Cu, Ge, and SiO2. If you wish to evaporate a material that is not on this list, you should use the E-beam Evaporator (Temescal), where you can request almost any metal. For other materials you may be able to use sputtering or ALD - see the list of available materials on the Overview page.

Thickness measurement, deposition rate and process control

Read about how the machine measures the thickness of the growing film using a quartz crystal monitor, how accurately you can control the rate/thickness, and other useful information about e-beam deposition here: Thickness, rate, process control.

Particulates in the films

Read about optimizing film quality including how to minimize the number of particulates in Au films in the E-beam evaporator (Temescal).

Equipment performance and process related parameters for the Temescal E-beam evaporator

Purpose Deposition of metals
  • E-beam evaporation of metals
  • Line-of-sight deposition
  • Possible to tilt sample
  • Possible to ion clean samples
  • Possible to modify deposition by Ar ion bombardment
Performance Film thickness
  • 10Å - 1µm* (for some materials)
Deposition rate
  • 0.5Å/s - 10Å/s
Thickness uniformity
  • up to 3 % Wafer-in-Wafer variation, Wafer-to-Wafer and Batch-to-Batch variation **
Thickness accuracy
  • May vary by up to about +/- 10 %
  • Less accurate for films below 20 nm
Process parameter range Process Temperature
  • Approximately room temperature.

Higher for refractive metals that require a lot of heat to evaporate, see above.

Process pressure
  • Below 1*10-6 mbar before deposition starts
  • Below 5*10-6 mbar during deposition
Source-substrate distance
  • 69.85 cm
Substrates Batch size
  • Up to four 6" wafers per standard run
  • Or up to three 8" wafers
  • Up to one 6" wafer with tilt
  • Deposition on one side of the substrate
Substrate material allowed
Material allowed on the substrate

* For thicknesses above x nm please request permission so we can ensure that enough material will be present.

** Defined as the ratio of the standard deviation to the average of the measurement made using the DektakXT. For further details see the acceptance test.

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