CN116200720A - AR+AF continuous vacuum coating equipment - Google Patents

Abstract

The invention discloses AR+AF continuous vacuum coating equipment, and belongs to the technical field of coating equipment. The invention comprises a vacuum system, a transfer system, a coating system and a measuring system, wherein the vacuum system is used for pumping air into a wafer feeding chamber, a process chamber, a conveying chamber and a wafer discharging chamber; the transfer system transfers the substrate frame and the product on the substrate frame; the coating system comprises an AR process chamber and an AF process chamber which are independently sealed, wherein the AR and AF films are coated in the chambers by using a barrel type magnetron sputtering mode and a vacuum evaporation mode; various sensors of the measuring system monitor and feed back the pressure, the temperature, the position of the moving mechanism and the flowmeter of the chamber, so that a closed loop design is formed. The invention solves the problem of membrane in the process of re-manufacturing the product after the product is in the atmosphere state, ensures the continuity of membrane layer manufacture, improves the adhesiveness of the membrane of the product, effectively prevents the cross contamination of the two processes by the design of the independent chamber, improves the quality of the product, and effectively improves the processing efficiency by adopting the cyclic production.

Description

AR+AF continuous vacuum coating equipment

Technical Field

The invention belongs to the technical field of coating equipment, and particularly relates to AR+AF continuous vacuum coating equipment.

Background

Under the development of intellectualization, the quality requirement of the intelligent equipment applied to daily use in human life is higher, the use experience is higher, and AR+AF film layers are plated on a vehicle, a mobile phone/flat plate, a camera and a lens, so that the best visual use effect is achieved.

The AR film layer plays an optical interference role, the transmissivity is increased on a glass product, the reflectivity of light is reduced, the AF film coats a layer of nano chemical material on the outer surface of the glass, the surface tension of the glass is reduced to the minimum, and the contact area between dust and the surface of the glass is reduced, so that the glass has stronger hydrophobic, anti-greasy dirt and anti-fingerprint capabilities; when the vehicle-mounted mobile phone/tablet, camera and lens are used, the effects of transparency, clarity, stain resistance and fingerprint resistance can be achieved. AR+AF is a standard process used for high-end products such as vehicles, mobile phones/tablets, cameras, lenses and the like at present.

The current manufacturing modes of AR mainly comprise magnetron sputtering coating mode manufacturing and evaporation coating mode manufacturing; AF is produced by spraying and vacuum evaporation. However, the AR process and the AF process performed in the same chamber may cause cross influence, resulting in unstable optical performance of AR, poor AF quality, failure of the film quality to meet the hydrophobic performance requirement and the friction performance requirement, and short service life of the film-preventing plate and the substrate holder of the chamber, requiring frequent replacement and maintenance, resulting in low productivity. The common AR film and AF film in-furnace film plating equipment and film plating method adopt in-furnace AR film and AF film to products. However, the method causes cross influence, causes unstable optical performance of AR, causes poor AF quality, and the film quality cannot meet the requirements of hydrophobic performance and friction performance. For this reason, an ar+af continuous vacuum plating apparatus has been proposed to solve the above-mentioned problems.

Disclosure of Invention

The invention aims to provide AR+AF continuous vacuum coating equipment, which aims to solve the problem that cross contamination is caused by carrying out AR film coating and AF film coating in the same furnace in order to improve the yield of the prior AR film and AF film coating equipment in the background technology, so that the AR optical performance is unstable, the AF quality is poor, and the film quality cannot meet the requirements of hydrophobic performance and friction performance. To achieve the above object, the present apparatus provides two independent process chambers that operate separately, avoiding the mutual contamination of the two chambers, improving the optical stability of the AR film, increasing the hydrophobicity and friction of AF, reducing the maintenance times, and increasing the yield. The specific technical scheme is as follows: an AR+AF continuous vacuum coating device comprises a vacuum system, a transfer system, a coating system and a measuring system: the vacuum system comprises a rough pump group and a front pump group, and is used for pumping air of a wafer feeding chamber, a wafer processing chamber, a wafer conveying chamber and a wafer discharging chamber, so that the chambers form vacuum so as to achieve processing conditions.

The transfer system comprises a moving mechanism, a substrate frame and a manipulator, and the whole operation steps are as follows: the product is placed on an empty substrate rack on the upper wafer stage, the empty substrate rack is transferred to the wafer feeding chamber through the moving mechanism, the substrate rack is transferred to the AR process chamber for coating, then the substrate rack is transferred to the carrying chamber, the substrate rack in the carrying chamber is transferred to the AF process chamber for coating, then the substrate rack is transferred to the wafer discharging chamber, and the substrate rack is transferred to the lower wafer stage through the moving mechanism.

The coating system comprises an AR process chamber and an AF process chamber which are independently sealed, wherein the AR process chamber comprises at least one pair of sputtering cathodes, an ICP oxidation source and a reaction gas source which are arranged on the inner wall of the vacuum chamber, the AR is manufactured by performing vacuum magnetic control coating on the product, and the AF process chamber is internally provided with an AF evaporation system, so that an AF film is manufactured by using a vacuum evaporation mode.

The measuring system comprises an air pressure sensor, a photoelectric sensor, a flowmeter and a temperature sensor, wherein the air pressure sensor is used for monitoring the pressure intensity of the wafer feeding chamber, the process chamber, the conveying chamber and the wafer discharging chamber, and the photoelectric sensor is used for monitoring the positions of the moving mechanism and the manipulator; the flowmeter measures and controls the atmosphere that is introduced into the chamber.

More preferably, go up piece platform and lower piece platform head and tail connection, the substrate frame on the lower piece platform is directly removed to last piece platform after dismantling the product, forms the circulation design, effectively improves work efficiency.

Further describing the scheme, the wafer feeding chamber, the wafer discharging chamber, the process chamber and the carrying chamber are all provided with valves, and the wafer feeding chamber, the wafer discharging chamber and the rough pumping pump set are connected through pipelines, so that air in the wafer feeding chamber and the wafer discharging chamber is rapidly pumped, and the front-stage pump set is connected with the process chamber and the carrying chamber through the TMP molecular pump, so that high vacuum of the process chamber and the carrying chamber is realized, and the purpose of high-quality coating is achieved.

Further describing the scheme, siTarget, nbTarget is used in the AR process chamber to perform magnetron sputtering through power discharge, and then reaction gas is introduced to react with the sputtered film layer, so that the obtained film thickness is 1-5 times higher than the film thickness efficiency of direct reaction.

Further describing the scheme, the AF evaporation system in the AF process chamber comprises a crucible and a heater, the equivalent liquid medicine is injected into the crucible, and then the crucible is heated for 5-8 minutes, so that the liquid medicine in the crucible is completely and pneumatically atomized and uniformly attached to the surface of a product, and the AF process can be finished, and the time is greatly shortened.

More preferably, the rotating frames in the AR process chamber and the AF process chamber are in barrel type design, so that the processing efficiency is effectively improved.

Compared with the prior art, the invention has the following beneficial effects:

1. the invention uses the vacuum magnetic control coating mode to manufacture AR and the vacuum evaporation mode to manufacture AF, and realizes vacuum continuous coating of the process by a vacuum connection mode, which is different from the prior sectional manufacturing AR equipment and sectional manufacturing AF equipment used in the market.

2. The AR process chamber and the AF process chamber are independent and separated, so that the vacuum stability of the chamber and the environmental requirement of the chamber are ensured, the cross-contamination of the two processes is prevented, and the product quality is improved.

3. The AF process has shorter manufacturing time, baking and curing are carried out after the traditional AF spraying mode is used for spraying the liquid medicine, the average baking and curing time is more than 30 minutes, the vacuum evaporation mode is adopted, the equivalent liquid medicine is only needed to be injected into the crucible, and the crucible is heated for 5-8 minutes, so that the liquid medicine in the crucible is completely atomized and uniformly attached to the surface of a product, and the AF coating time is greatly shortened; compared with the traditional wet spraying mode, the invention saves more liquid medicine, and the using amount of the AF liquid medicine is saved by 2-5 times compared with the wet spraying mode.

4. The invention realizes automatic continuous production by designing a circulating production line, realizes yield improvement and reduces labor cost.

Drawings

FIG. 1 is a schematic view of an embodiment of the present invention;

fig. 2 is a schematic flow chart provided in an embodiment of the present invention.

Wherein, each reference sign in the figure:

1. a loading table; 2. a moving mechanism; 3. a sheet feeding chamber; 4. an AR process chamber; 5. a conveying chamber; 6. an AF process chamber; 7. a sheet discharging chamber; 8. a piece feeding table; 9. a substrate holder; 10. a rough pump group; 11. a pre-pump group; 12. a SiTarget cathode; 13. an NbTarget cathode; 14. an ICP oxidation source; 15. a reaction gas; 16. an AF evaporation system; 17. a measurement system; 18. and a manipulator.

ICP: (IndustiviveCoupledPlasmissionSpectrometer) inductively coupled plasma;

AR: anti-reflection antireflective;

AF: anti-fingerprint;

SiTarget: a silicon target;

NbTarget: niobium targets.

Detailed Description

In order that the invention may be readily understood, a more complete description of the invention will be rendered by reference to the appended drawings. The drawings illustrate preferred embodiments of the invention. This invention may, however, be embodied in many different forms and should not be construed as limited to the embodiments set forth herein. Rather, these embodiments are provided so that this disclosure will be thorough and complete.

The technical scheme of the patent is further described in detail below with reference to the specific embodiments.

Referring to fig. 1 and 2, the present application provides an ar+af continuous vacuum coating apparatus, which includes a vacuum system, a transfer system, a coating system, and a measurement system 17: the vacuum system comprises a rough pump group 10 and a front pump group 11, and is used for pumping air of the wafer feeding chamber 3, the process chamber, the conveying chamber 5 and the wafer discharging chamber 7, so that the chambers form vacuum so as to achieve processing conditions.

The transfer system comprises a moving mechanism 2, a substrate frame 9 and a manipulator 18, and the whole operation steps are as follows: the product is placed on the empty substrate rack 9 on the upper sheet table 1, and is transferred to the sheet feeding chamber 3 through the moving mechanism 2, the substrate rack 9 is transferred to the AR process chamber 4 for coating and then transferred to the carrying chamber 5, the substrate rack 9 in the carrying chamber 5 is transferred to the AF process chamber 6 for coating and then transferred to the sheet discharging chamber 7 through the mechanical arm 18 of the AF process chamber 6, and the substrate rack 9 is transferred to the lower sheet table 8 through the moving mechanism 2.

The coating system comprises an AR process chamber 4 and an AF process chamber 6 which are independently sealed, wherein the AR process chamber 4 comprises at least one pair of sputtering cathodes, an ICP oxidation source 14 and a reaction gas 15 source which are arranged on the inner wall of the vacuum chamber, the AR is manufactured by performing vacuum magnetic control coating on the product, and an AF evaporation system 16 is arranged in the AF process chamber 6, and an AF film is manufactured by using the vacuum evaporation mode.

The measuring system 17 comprises an air pressure sensor, a photoelectric sensor, a flowmeter and a temperature sensor, wherein the air pressure sensor is used for monitoring the pressure intensity of the wafer feeding chamber 3, the process chamber, the conveying chamber 5 and the wafer discharging chamber 7, and the photoelectric sensor is used for monitoring the positions of the moving mechanism 2 and the manipulator 18; the flowmeter measures and controls the atmosphere that is introduced into the chamber. Go up piece platform 1 and lower piece platform 8 end to end, the substrate frame 9 on the lower piece platform 8 directly removes last piece platform 1 after dismantling the product, forms the circulation design, effectively improves work efficiency. The feeding chamber 3, the discharging chamber 7, the process chamber and the carrying chamber 5 are all provided with valves, the feeding chamber 3, the discharging chamber 7 and the rough pump set 10 are connected in a pipeline manner, so that air in the feeding chamber 3 and the discharging chamber 7 is rapidly pumped, the front pump set 11 is connected with the process chamber and the carrying chamber 5 through a TMP molecular pump, the air in the process chamber and the carrying chamber 5 is cleared, no air in the chamber is ensured, and high-quality coating is realized.

The magnetron sputtering is carried out in the AR process chamber 4 by using SiTarget, nbTarget through power supply discharge, and then the reaction gas 15 is introduced to react the sputtered film layer, so that the obtained film thickness is 1-5 times higher than the film thickness efficiency of the direct reaction. The AF evaporation system 16 in the AF process chamber 6 comprises a crucible and a heater, the equivalent amount of liquid medicine is injected into the crucible, and then the crucible is heated for 5-8 minutes, so that the liquid medicine in the crucible is completely and uniformly atomized and attached to the surface of a product, and the AF process can be finished, and the time is greatly shortened. The rotating frames in the AR process chamber 4 and the AF process chamber 6 are of barrel type, so that the processing efficiency is effectively improved.

Working principle and using process:

as shown in fig. 1 and 2, a user cleans a product to be coated at the upper stage 1 and then installs the product on the substrate rack 9, the substrate rack 9 is moved to the feeding chamber 3 through the moving mechanism 2, after entering the feeding chamber 3, the valve is closed, the rough pumping pump set 10 pumps air to the feeding chamber 3, after the air pressure sensor reaches a specified value, the valves of the feeding chamber 3 and the mechanical arm 18 are opened, the valves of the mechanical arm 18 and the AR process chamber 4 are opened, and the mechanical arm 18 transfers the substrate rack 9 to a barrel of the AR process chamber 4.

After the barrel is filled with the substrate frame 9 by the manipulator 18, the valve of the AR processing chamber 4 is closed, the reaction gas 15 is introduced into the AR processing chamber 4 to react with the sputtered film layer after magnetron sputtering is carried out by using SiTarget, nbTarget through power discharge, the valve is opened after the reaction is finished, and the manipulator 18 transfers the product plated with the AR film to the vacuum conveying chamber 5.

The mechanical arm 18 of the AF process chamber 6 transfers the substrate frame 9 in the carrying chamber 5 to the AF process chamber 6 in vacuum, after the transfer is finished, the valve of the AF process chamber 6 is closed, the liquid injection device injects equivalent liquid medicine into the crucible, the AF liquid medicine is heated, evaporated and atomized by the heater, the temperature can be freely set at RT-500 ℃, and the liquid medicine which is thermally evaporated and atomized is uniformly distributed and adhered to the surface of a product.

After the AF process chamber 6 is coated with the AF film, the mechanical arm 18 transfers the substrate frame 9 to the vacuum film outlet chamber 7, the film outlet chamber 7 is gradually broken and emptied, then the substrate frame 9 is transferred to the lower sheet table 8 through the moving mechanism 2, the coated product is detached from the substrate frame 9 at the lower sheet table 8, and finally the empty substrate frame 9 returns to the upper sheet table 1.

It should be noted that the loading, transferring, AR coating and AF molding of the product can be performed simultaneously, and the whole body forms a closed loop circulation, thereby realizing the circulation and continuous production of the whole line.

It will be understood that when an element is referred to as being "fixed to" another element, it can be directly on the other element or intervening elements may also be present. When an element is referred to as being "connected" to another element, it can be directly connected to the other element or intervening elements may also be present. In contrast, when an element is referred to as being "directly on" another element, there are no intervening elements present. The terms "vertical," "horizontal," "left," "right," and the like are used herein for illustrative purposes only and are not meant to be the only embodiments, and the terms "upper," "lower," "left," "right," "front," "back," and the like are used herein with reference to the positional relationship of the drawings.

Unless defined otherwise, all technical and scientific terms used herein have the same meaning as commonly understood by one of ordinary skill in the art to which this invention belongs. The terminology used herein in the description of the invention is for the purpose of describing particular embodiments only and is not intended to be limiting of the invention. The term "and/or" as used herein includes any and all combinations of one or more of the associated listed items.

The above embodiments are only for illustrating the present invention, not for limiting the present invention, and various changes and modifications may be made by one of ordinary skill in the relevant art without departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention, and therefore, all equivalent technical solutions are also within the scope of the present invention, and the scope of the present invention is defined by the claims.

Claims (6)

1. The AR+AF continuous vacuum coating equipment comprises a vacuum system, a transfer system, a coating system and a measuring system (17), and is characterized in that:

the vacuum system comprises a rough pump group (10) and a front pump group (11) and is used for pumping air of the wafer feeding chamber (3), the process chamber, the conveying chamber (5) and the wafer discharging chamber (7);

the transfer system comprises a moving mechanism (2), a substrate frame (9) and a mechanical arm (18), wherein a product is placed on the substrate frame (9) and is transferred to the feeding chamber (3) through the moving mechanism (2), the mechanical arm (18) transfers the substrate frame (9) to the AR process chamber (4) for coating, then transfers the substrate frame to the conveying chamber (5), the mechanical arm (18) of the AF process chamber (6) transfers the substrate frame (9) in the conveying chamber (5) to the AF process chamber (6) for coating, then transfers the substrate frame to the discharging chamber (7), and the substrate frame (9) is transferred to the discharging table (8) through the moving mechanism (2);

the coating system comprises an AR process chamber (4) and an AF process chamber (6) which are independently sealed, wherein the AR process chamber (4) comprises at least one pair of sputtering cathode targets, an ICP oxidation source (14) and a reaction gas source which are arranged on the inner wall of a vacuum chamber, and the AF process chamber (6) is internally provided with an AF evaporation system (16);

the measuring system (17) comprises an air pressure sensor, a photoelectric sensor, a flowmeter and a temperature sensor, wherein the air pressure sensor is used for monitoring the pressure intensity of the wafer feeding chamber (3), the pressure intensity of the wafer processing chamber, the pressure intensity of the wafer conveying chamber (5) and the pressure intensity of the wafer discharging chamber (7), and the photoelectric sensor is used for monitoring the positions of the moving mechanism (2) and the positions of the mechanical arm (18); the flowmeter measures and controls the atmosphere that is introduced into the cavity.

2. The ar+af continuous vacuum plating apparatus according to claim 1, wherein: the upper sheet table (1) and the lower sheet table (8) are connected end to form a circulation design.

3. The ar+af continuous vacuum plating apparatus according to claim 1, wherein: the wafer feeding chamber (3), the wafer discharging chamber (7), the process chamber and the carrying chamber (5) are all provided with valves, the wafer feeding chamber (3), the wafer discharging chamber (7) are connected with the rough pumping pump set (10) in a pipeline mode, and the pre-stage pump set (11) is connected with the process chamber and the carrying chamber (5) through the TMP molecular pump.

4. The ar+af continuous vacuum plating apparatus according to claim 1, wherein: the cathode target includes SiTarget, nbTarget.

5. The ar+af continuous vacuum plating apparatus according to claim 1, wherein: an AF vaporization system (16) within the AF process chamber (6) includes a crucible and a heater.

6. An ar+af continuous vacuum plating apparatus according to any of claims 1-5, wherein: the rotating frames in the AR process chamber (4) and the AF process chamber (6) are of barrel type design.

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