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Surface Engineering & Materials Chemistry Facilities

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Combined laboratories of more than 5,000 square feet of facilities are dedicated to:

  • Vacuum surface modification
  • Atmospheric plasma modification
  • Wet chemistry-based surface modification
  • Coating of advanced materials

SwRI has a full complement of physical vapor deposition (PVD) and chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and ion implantation technologies.

Physical Vapor Deposition Techniques

  • Plasma enhanced magnetron sputtering (PEMS)
  • High power impulse magnetron sputtering (HIPIMS)
  • Deep oscillation magnetron sputtering (DOMS)
  • Electron beam evaporation (E-beam)
  • Ion beam assisted deposition (IBAD)

Chemical Vapor Deposition Techniques

  • Plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD)
  • Plasma immersion ion process (PIIP) and deposition (PIID)
  • Chemical vapor deposition (CVD)
  • Cathodic Arc
  • Atmospheric pressure plasma jets (APPJ)

Ion Implantation Techniques

  • Plasma immersion ion implantation (PIII)
  • High energy ion beam implantation

PVD and CVD processes use RF, pulsed DC, HiPIMS, and DC power supplies

These techniques may be carried out in one of SwRI’s 10 vacuum coating chambers. A few of the chambers are 3 cubic meters in size. SwRI assists clients in developing coatings from the prototype stage to pre-production. SwRI is able to satisfy client coating needs and controlled engineering of surface properties. A few of the coatings that SwRI specializes in are:

  • Diamond like carbon (DLC) (0.1-30μm)
  • Superhard, ultra-thick nanocomposite coatings (>45GPa, 10-500μm) , nanocrystalline nitrides in amorphous SICxNy, including TiSiCN, CrSiCN, TiAlSiCN, TaSiCN
  • Multifunctional nanocomposite coatings
  • Multilayer and superlattice coatings
  • Traditional hard tribological coatings including TiN, CrN, AlTiN, AlCrN, etc.
  • Oxide coatings with high- and low-refractive index
  • Spray coatings
  • Oleophobic coatings
  • Hydrophobic coatings
  • Web coating
  • Roll-to-roll coating

Specialized Facilities

Specialized facilities are available for evaluations that utilize state-of-the-art materials characterization such as:

  • Atomic force microscopy (AFM)
  • Scanning electron microscopy (SEM)
  • Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM)
  • Fiber-optic probes
  • Raman spectrometers
  • IR spectrometers
  • Tabor testing
  • Nanoindentation
  • Ball-on-disk tribometer
  • Scratch and indentation adhesion test
  • X-ray diffraction
  • High-temperature wear test
Precision Analysis