AJA thermal evaporation system; Copyright: Gillian Kiliani

The AJA thermal evaporation system can handle three boats and a quartz crystal for rate monitoring. It offers a holder for substrates up to 4" diameter which can be continuously rotated at a maximum of 40 RPM. Standard materials that can be evaporated are gold, chromium or aluminium. However, many others are possible. Users are oblidged to bring their own materials and boats.

An easy to obtain base pressure after 30 min of pumping is 1x10-6 mbar. Typical evaporation rates for gold are in the range of a few nm/s, resulting in typical final film thicknesses of 20−200 nm.