[Kato]

Coating Process
The product is placed into the vacuum chamber on a carousel and the chamber is evacuated. The product is preheated to a low processing temperature around 150 c. The preheating phase of the process conditions the substrate for the coating and will ensure that all of the moisture absorbed by the material has been outgassed before the deposition process begins.

After the preheat cycle is complete, the process transitions into the ion etching phase where product is bombarded with ions from argon gas to scrub or sputter clean the surface and remove micro oxides. This scrubbing of the surface with ions cleans the surface and improves the adhesion of the coating to the substrate.
After the substrate has been sputter cleaned, the process transitions into the coating phase. If an initial layer (underlayer) is needed to improve the performance of the product in the final use, the high energy sputtering process is used to deposit a dense well adhered smooth underlayer. As the underlayer coating reaches the proper thickness, the process transitions into the DLC coating step which deposits a dense, smooth amorphous carbon hydrogenated layer onto the product’s surface.

Coating Phase
During the DLC coating phase of the process, a carbon carrying gas is introduced into the chamber. This gas is the source for the amorphous carbon DLC coating. The carbon carrying gas introduced into the chamber is ionized by auxiliary anodes and undergoes what is referred to as “cracking” or separating of the hydrogen and carbon in the gas. The ionized hydrogen and carbon atoms in the gas are drawn to the surface of the product with an electrical charge that is applied to the carousel.

Final steps
The carousel that has the electrical charge applied and is carrying the product to be coated is also rotating in the chamber and draws the ionized carbon/hydrogen ions to the surface of the product forming the amorphous carbon or diamond like carbon film.