Ultra-short laser deposition tech cuts materials costs

Picodeon Ltd has unleashed the ColdAb ultra-short pulsed laser deposition technology (US PLD) intended for the application of gold and platinum thin films. The firm stated that the technology enables thinner films and decreases precious metal costs.

Precious metals such as gold and platinum are finding more and more industrial applications in memory storage, energy harvesting, energy storage and MEMS applications. Traditional production methods for thin gold films include sputtering, evaporation and chemical vapour deposition, all of which have limitations either in quality, production efficiency or industrial scalability.

The ColdAb US PLD process produces thin films, down to nano-scale, with excellent quality at production rates exceeding, for example, sputtering technology, noted Picodeon.

ColdAb deposition process showing plasma plume.

The US PLD deposition is a cold ablation technology that works across a vast range of coating materials and substrates. By adjusting processing parameters, the structure and properties of the coating can be tailored to the requirements of the application, even for nanostructure-scale surface coatings. The US PLD technology delivers very high coating integrity without pinholes, giving improved thin film reliability.

In addition to precious metal, Picodeon's Coldab process enables the deposition of high hardness compounds such as diamond-like carbon compounds, carbon nitrides and carbon nitride composites containing polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), boron nitride (BN) or boron carbide (BC) as well as a range of other borides, oxides and precious metal thin films.