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 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 heater and oxygen flow.

Materials for e-beam evaporation

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

Aluminium (Al)
Aluminium oxide (Al₂O₃) - the 10-pocket evaporator still needs to be added to this page
Chromium (Cr)
Copper (Cu)
Germanium (Ge)
Gold (Au)
Nickel (Ni)
Platinum (Pt)
Silicon (Si) - the 10-pocket evaporator still needs to be added to this page
Silicon oxide (SiO₂) - the 10-pocket evaporator still needs to be added to this page
Silver (Ag)
Titanium (Ti)

In addition to the pure metals you are welcome to experiment with depositing their oxides by adding oxygen during growth, though we expect the resultant films to be O-poor. E.g., TiOx films deposited with a low oxygen flow during acceptance testing had a stoichiometry of approx. TiO_1.8. Please talk to staff if you wish to work with the oxides.

Most of these materials on the list above are fixed and will be present in the machine at least a year at a time. This applies to: Al, Cr, Au, Ni, Pt, Si, Ag, and Ti.

A few of them are deposited from liners and may be exchanged on request. This applies to: Al₂O₃, Cu, Ge, and SiO₂.

If you wish to evaporate a metal 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 10-pocket e-beam evaporator

Purpose	Deposition of metals	E-beam evaporation of metals Line-of-sight deposition Possible to tilt sample Possible to heat samples to 250 C Possible to add O2 flow during growth
Performance	Film thickness	10Å - 1µm* (material dependent)
	Deposition rate	1Å/s - 10Å/s* material dependent
	Thickness uniformity	up to 3 % Wafer-in-Wafer, 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 up to 250 C. There is no controllable cooling, so substrates may get heated during evaporation of some metals, e.g., Au and Pt. You can see the approximate temperature from the readout of the thermocouple in the chamber.
	Process pressure	Below 110^-6 mbar before deposition starts Below 810^-6 mbar during deposition
	Source-substrate distance	69.85 cm
Substrates	Batch size	Up to four 6" wafers Or up to three 8" wafers Up to one 6" wafer with tilt Deposition on one side of the substrate
	Substrate material allowed	Silicon wafers Quartz wafers Pyrex wafers See also the cross-contamination sheet - needs correct address
	Material allowed on the substrate	Silicon oxide Silicon (oxy)nitride Photoresist PMMA Mylar Metals See also the cross-contamination sheet - needs correct equipment address

* See table in manual. For thicknesses above the indicated limit between 100 and 600 nm please request permission so we can ensure that enough material will be present and the machine can be cleaned up as needed. For materials in liners the rate is more limited than for materials deposited directly from the hearth.

** 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.