Advanced Materials & Devices Overview
Nanohmics’ scientists have extensive experience with advanced materials, primarily in the areas of growth, deposition, and characterization of novel thin film compounds for their optical, electrical, or mechanical properties. In-house capability for doing surface science, RF-magnetron sputter deposition, and a wide range of characterization measurements allows a systematic exploration of materials systems and properties that would be difficult to perform in a dedicated production coating environment.
A particular focus of Nanohmics’ work is in the area of amorphous Group III nitrides, such as AlN, GaN, and InN. Low temperature reactive deposition of these materials results in extremely durable and adherent films with interesting optical and electrical properties. The amorphous nitrides are flexible and can be deposited on a variety of substrates, including polymers. Optical properties are consistent with the band-gap of the Group III nitrides in bulk, ranging from transparency in the UV-far IR for AlN to transparency in limited regions of the IR for InN. Ternary amorphous nitrides allow "tuning" of the dielectric and optical properties of the materials in a constant proportion to the Group III element. Substitutional doping of the films during growth with other elements can also modify the spectral properties of the material. With these process variables, economical custom optical coatings can be fabricated on virtually any substrate. In-house capability for multi-layer optical coating design and optimization, as well as polarimetry and spectral analysis of reflectance and transmittance rounds out this capability.
In addition to the amorphous Group III nitride materials, Nanohmics has capabilities for deposition of a wide range of pure metal films, dielectric, and reactive compounds. We recently added the capability to deposit refractory-metal oxide thin films on ultra-thin polymer "webs" in a reel-to-reel fashion. Deposition can be accomplished, single-pass, on one or both sides of the polymer film, with precise definition of the deposition boundaries. Work is being focused in this area on fabrication of the next generation of high-temperature, high-energy-density electrical capacitors.