Press Release: AccuStrata Receives SBIR Contract for $1,150,000 From Department of Energy

Rockville, MD, April, 2016: AccuStrata receives a SBIR contract from DoE for $1,150,000 to develop an advanced atomic emission/absorption system for process control during vacuum deposition of complex thin film products

This SBIR Phase II contract continues the Phase I effort to finalize the development of a novel process control system, installable on a broad variety of physical vapor deposition systems for the manufacturing of high-precision thin films. The system provides accurate and reliable deposition rate and film composition measurements needed for dynamic feedback process control. The system comprises two major components – a reconfigurable hardware module located outside the deposition chamber with element specific light sources and a portable fiber-optic-based monitoring frame installed inside the deposition chamber in the area surrounding the substrate. The prefabricated and optically aligned frame, installed inside the deposition chamber, eliminates costly equipment refurbishing and allows flexibility and easy customization. The unique system design allows precise signal referencing and accurate measurement of the element concentration on the vicinity of the substrate.

During this Phase II the development of a commercial in situ atomic spectroscopy system for thin film process control will be finalized. Two systems will be installed on X-Ray optics manufacturing lines at two different national laboratories in the United States for control of the deposition rate and composition of the complex multi-layer thin film stacks used in the fabrication of X-Ray optics.