A customer approached PVD Products to develop a production-oriented tool to deposit high-quality Y1Ba2Cu3O7-δ (YBCO) thin films onto MgO substrates for microwave applications, specifically for microwave filters for cellular phone applications. Our team had to demonstrate our technology's capabilities that would produce the desired quality of the films. Films with a minimum quality as noted below had to be provided:

Wilmington, MA (Sept. 25, 2017) – Over the last eight months, PVD Products has experienced a period of exponential growth, leading to several new hires. The company has recently hired a Principal Engineer and Chief Technology Officer.

PVD Products prides itself on its customer service—cultivating relationships with any type of person, whether that be an actual customer, supplier or industry colleague. There relationships are intended to go beyond the individual PVD Products contact to the company as a whole. We recently spoke with Bob Sumner, Materials Manager for PVD Products, who truly embodies this with an extensive history from the customer service, purchasing and manufacturing industry.

At heart, we are a “scientist” company. Our team has a deep understanding of the underlying physics of material science, chemistry, optics, plasmas and electronics. That expertise is what allows us to develop our own components, such as our line of magnetrons, without waiting for the general coating industry to catch up with the latest science. That expertise also enables us to understand a customer’s needs at a fundamental scientific level so that we can develop individual solutions to address their technical challenges.

It makes us very proud to say that we are Adam's only employer after he had finished schooling 12 years ago. We've watched him grow from a grad student doing research to leading our team as an applications engineer. It's Adam's dedication to this team that has helped to create strong, trusting relationships with our customers. We spoke with Adam about his role in bringing challenging and exciting projects in a wide variety of applications to life.

If your laboratory or manufacturing site anticipates working with toxic or highly reactive species, then thorough planning is required prior to purchasing and installing a thin film deposition tool. This planning should happen well before completing the instrument design, as it is difficult and expensive to retroactively address safety issues.

PVD Products is proud of the equipment we produce. But it’s our responsibility to have the users, whether they are in a research lab or production factory, really understand how to take care of and optimize the capabilities of these tools. That’s why we have Clark.

At a fundamental level, the specifications for a specific thin-film coating will drive the overall requirements for a vacuum deposition system. Wise choices early in the concept phase will reduce the overall cost of a coating system without sacrificing the throughput or film quality.

By researchers, for researchers There’s nothing that fuels our team’s passion more than building a custom R&D system. Our extensive background in thin film coating allows us to fundamentally understand and support the deposition process for specific R&D applications in a way that standard capital equipment manufacturers cannot.

If you look carefully at any of our equipment photos, you will find a small rubber ducky placed somewhere on the deposition tool. These ducks have become PVD's informal mascot, and we include one of our ducks with every deposition system that we ship. We often tell clients that the machine is free, but the duck costs $1,000,000! You may be wondering, what on earth do ducks have to do with thin-film deposition equipment? Well that’s a funny story.