Nano-Product Engineering |

Plasma-Assisted Chemical Vapor Deposition

Large area diamond coatings

NPE has developed a series of large area arc plasma reactors for PACVD processes, including process for diamond coatings, with deposition areas up to several sq. meters, operating pressures 1 mTorr to 100 Torr, and deposition rates of diamond films ranging from 1 to 30 µm/hr.

Diamond coatings on ceramic powders

In addition to large area diamond processes, NPE has developed reactors for processing ceramic powders. These reactors, with dimensions measured in meters, can process multi-kilogram loads of ceramic powders, producing product powders with core-shell particles ranging from the nanometer to the millimeter scale.

One embodiment of the diamond PACVD reactor, with the substrates to be coated suspended within the arc plasma cloud. In this video, a diamond coating is being deposited on cutting inserts.

Diamonds deposited by our process under electron microscope.

Diagram of a product particle from the ceramic powder reactor. The ceramic core, typically SiC or WC, is surrounded by a diamond shell.

NPE has developed two kinds of powder processing reactors: a rotary tubular reactor, and a fluidized bed reactor. The video above demonstrates the operation of the fluidized bed reactor, with the powder cloud suspended in the reactive plasma flow.