What is vacuum coating?

Preparation of vacuum films, including metal, semiconductor, insulator and other elemental or composite films. Although chemical vapor deposition also uses vacuum means such as vacuum pressure, low pressure or plasma, the general vacuum coating refers to the deposition of thin films by physical methods. Vacuum coating has evaporation coating, sputtering coating and ion coating three forms.

Vacuum coating technology appeared in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s began to appear in industrial applications, industrial mass production began in the 1980s, in electronics, aerospace, packaging, decoration, bronzing printing and other industries have been widely used. Vacuum coating refers to the deposition of metal or metal compounds in the form of vapor on the surface of materials (usually non-metallic materials) under vacuum environment, which is a physical vapor deposition process. Because the coating is often a metal film, it is also called vacuum metallization. Generalized vacuum coating also includes non-metallic functional film such as polymer vacuum evaporation on the surface of metal or non-metallic materials. Of all electroplated materials, plastic is the most common, followed by paper coatings. Compared with metal, ceramic, wood and other materials, plastic has the advantages of sufficient sources, easy to control the performance, convenient processing and so on, so all kinds of plastic or other polymer materials as engineering decoration structure materials, a large number of applications in automotive, household appliances, daily packaging, process decoration and other industrial fields. However, the surface hardness of plastic materials is not high, the appearance is not gorgeous enough, and the wear resistance is low. For example, the evaporation on the plastic surface, a thin layer of metal film can give the plastic the appearance of Alfred metal. The suitable metal source can also greatly increase the wear resistance of the surface, which greatly broadens the scope of plastic decoration and application.

The function of vacuum coating is various, which also determines its application field is very rich. Generally speaking, the main role of vacuum coating includes coating the surface of components with higher metallic luster and film material mirror effect. The thin film layer has excellent barrier performance, provides excellent electromagnetic shielding and conductive effect.