Apparatus and method for making composition spread alloy films

Abstract

The present invention describes the design, operation and performance of a new Composition Spread Alloy Film (CSAF) deposition having a rotatable shadow mask and capable of depositing CSAFs of at least two elemental components. The individual components can be deposited simultaneously from physical vapor deposition sources, such as, electron beams, effusion cells, and sputter sources, thus allowing preparation of CSAFs that can contain most metallic elements of the periodic table and other materials amenable to sputtering and physical vapor deposition techniques. Multicomponent materials with lateral composition gradients are deposited in such a way that both the direction and the amplitude of the composition gradient can be controlled independently for all components. An ultra-high vacuum chamber housing the apparatus can be used as a stand-alone device or interfaced with other vacuum chamber apparatus containing the tools for bulk and surface characterization necessary to establish the structure-composition-property relationships of a multicomponent alloy.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.