We offer the following services:
Coatings are an important part of modern materials technology. They can modify and functionalize the properties of material surfaces. There are several coating processes in which a distinction is made between solid, dissolved, liquid and gaseous, depending on the initial state of the material to be applied.
At the Fraunhofer Application Center Soest, we can provide you with vapour deposition in high vacuum. This is a process in which the solid coating material is heated and evaporates. For small editions, we primarily use gold, silver and aluminium. The evaporation temperatures are typically between 1,500 °C and 2,000 °C. Solid materials such as metals, glasses and glass ceramics can be used as carrier materials for the coatings. The structure and shape of the carrier material is almost arbitrary. In vacuum, the evaporated material is deposited on the given surface structure. Depending on the quantity of the starting material and the coating time, the thickness of the coating can be varied.
The Fraunhofer Application Center Soest offers various imaging techniques (laser scanning and scanning electron microscopy, thermography) and spectroscopic methods (energy dispersive X-ray analysis, optical spectroscopy) to assess the coating quality.
Fraunhofer-Institut für Mikrostruktur von Werkstoffen und Systemen IMWS