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Thermal Evaporation

Thermal evaporation is a physical vapor deposition technique where source materials are heated in vacuum until they evaporate and condense onto substrates. It's particularly useful for depositing metals and some semiconductors.

Overview

This schema package defines thermal evaporation processes with detailed control of:

  • Source material heating (resistive, electron beam)
  • Deposition rates and film thickness
  • Substrate temperature
  • Chamber vacuum conditions

The thermal evaporation process extends NOMAD's Process and Activity base classes, providing:

  • Links to input entities (substrates, source materials) and output entities (samples/libraries)
  • Evaporation parameters (heating method, power, rate, thickness)
  • Vacuum conditions and deposition control
  • Automated workflow integration

Typical Usage

  1. Set up deposition: Reference substrates to use and source materials
  2. Configure evaporation: Set heating method, power, target rate, final thickness
  3. Control conditions: Chamber pressure, substrate temperature
  4. Document deposition: Record actual rates, thickness uniformity
  5. Link output: Reference the samples or libraries created

Key Parameters

  • Source material: Composition, purity, loading
  • Heating method: Resistive heating (boat/crucible), electron beam
  • Deposition control: Rate, thickness, shutter timing
  • Vacuum: Base pressure, working pressure
  • Substrate handling: Temperature, rotation, shutter control

Common Applications

  • Metal contacts: Electrode deposition for electrical measurements
  • Seed layers: Nucleation layers for subsequent growth
  • Simple compounds: Materials that evaporate congruently
  • Multi-layer structures: Sequential deposition of different materials

Thermal Evaporation vs. Sputtering

Use thermal evaporation when:

  • You need very gentle deposition (less energetic than sputtering)
  • Working with materials that evaporate cleanly
  • Depositing thick metal layers quickly

Use sputtering when:

  • You need better stoichiometry control (especially for alloys/compounds)
  • Creating composition gradients (combinatorial libraries)
  • Working with refractory materials
  • Depositing oxides or nitrides

Schema Documentation

DtuThermalEvaporation

inherits from: nomad_material_processing.vapor_deposition.pvd.thermal.ThermalEvaporation, nomad.datamodel.data.EntryData

normalization:

The normalizer for the ThermalEvaporation class.

Args: archive (EntryArchive): The archive containing the section that is being normalized. logger (BoundLogger): A structlog logger.