Improving microchannel plates with ALD
One of the most common questions we get here at Beneq is: What are the Beneq tools used for?
More and more Beneq equipment is used for industrial applications that improve the characteristics of our customers’ end products, but there are also many Beneq tools out there that are used for research of all kinds.
We are very proud of the ALD research that is performed every day around the world using our equipment. The research is essential to the success of Beneq and we want to promote the results in any way we can. In this blog category, we will be sharing news, articles and other interesting stuff from the academia.
The content in this section may be a bit nerdy – erm, technically oriented, we mean – so if you are more into the business benefits of industrial ALD, this may not be the channel for you. Application examples will be shared in the Services and Equipment categories of the blog.
Anyway, we will start this blog category by sharing an interesting ALD article that has been written by researchers of Incom Inc., Argonne National Laboratory and the Space Science Laboratory of University of California.
The equipment used was Beneq’s TFS 500 ALD system with a specially modified reaction chamber.
Atomic layer deposition of alternative glass microchannel plates
As you know, microchannel plates (MCPs) are electron multiplier components that detect particles and radiation in two dimensions. The research group used ALD to create MCPs with independently tunable resistive and emissive layers and alternative substrate materials.
This is what they found out (among other things):
“The deposition of an ALD W:Al2O3 layer that can be tuned to target specified resistance ranges, in combination with an ALD SEE layer of Al2O3 or MgO with higher electron emissivity, offers the opportunity to manufacture application-targeted and customer-specified MCPs. The performance and fabrication advantages of ALD functionalized MCPs, coupled with the benefits of using alternative glass substrates, provides many opportunities for commercialization of these MCP products in addition to exploration of alternate ALD chemistries and glass substrates.”
A great example about how ALD can be used to improve product characteristics and to increase the lifetime of components, we think. It also shows that research will help us in our efforts to find new industrial applications for atomic layer deposition.
You can read all about it in Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology.