Gold is one of the most beautifully luminescent and valuable metals on Earth because of its ability to throw light, reflect energy and resist tarnishing. PVD or Physical Vapor Deposition Gold Sputtering is commonly used in the watch and jewelry industry to produce coatings that are hard and durable and won’t rub off with constant contact with the skin or clothes and lose it sheen.
PVD Gold Sputtering is also used for coating circuit panels and electronic components due to its excellent conductivity, for coating optical fibers, batteries and high end faucets and fixtures. Gold Sputtering processes are invaluable for biomedical implants that serve as radiopaque coatings that are visible in x-rays and lifesaving procedures like coating tissue samples to make them visible for scanning under electron microscopes.
Gold Sputtering coatings are a thin film deposition process where gold or a gold alloy is bombarded with high energy ions in a vacuum chamber resulting in the gold atoms or molecules being “Sputtered” into the vapor and condensing on the substrate to be coated such as jewelry, circuit boards or medical implants.
———- Above Article is from Semircore
Gold Plating on Decorations
Decorative hard coatings have to meet variety of requirements such as attractive colors and high wear resistance. For luxury consumer goods such as watch components, writing instruments or spectacles, some manufactures want to maintain both the high wear resistance of PVD and the “gold plate” label which provides the product with a “high quality” image. So a 3 to 5 μm layer of gold plating must therefore be deposit onto a (TiN+Au) PVD layer. This multi-layer method creates a high level of internal stress leading to adhesion defects. A complete process has to be set up in order to reduce the internal stress leading to adhesion defects.
Royal Technology Developed the IPG process widely used on watch bands, watch dials, jewelry like rings, necklace, bracelets, writing instruments, luxury consumer accessories.
WHY A COMBINATION OF “ GOLD PLATING” AND PVD?
Gold is still the most widely used color for decorative applications, and this is unlikely to change. For gold colored decorative hard coatings, the current state-of-the-art technique involves depositing a thin top layer of gold alloy onto a basic hard coating consisting of TiN. Unfortunately, gold alloy sputtering is a non-reactive process and for each different gold alloy a very definite color is obtained (for deposition temperatures around 200℃)
This process must not alert the final gold color without changing the gold target. Some manufactures also want to maintain both the high wear resistance of PVD and the “Gold plated” label which provides the product a high quality image. For these three seasons:
High wear resistance of the PVD layer
Gold plated label
Wide range of gold color provided by the final plating
A reliable process must now be found which allows a thick (3 to 5 μm) of electroplated gold onto a TiN+Au layer.
This process is called IPG. IPG is a short writing of Ion Plating Gold, which it is a technology of arc and sputtering combined to deposit Gold thin film on luxury products, especially on jewelry industry like: necklace, wedding rings, ear rings, watches, handbag accessories etc.
The Jewelry materials are mostly stainless steel 316L, brass, or alloy. After exclusively pre-treatment, jewelry manufactures can use our IPG gold plating machine directly to get the 18K rose gold or 24K real gold coatings, which highly enhance the products life and value.
24K / 18K Gold PVD Plating Machine on Jewelry- RTAS1000 Model
Royal Technology provides PVD coating solutions for application of various IPG gold demands: IPG gold jewely, necklace, finger rings, handbags metal parts, watch, sporting products, writing instruments, smart phones, electronic products etc.
For the IPG gold colors, from light gold to dark gold, we have the coating processes which get the customer desired color with different target and coating recipes.
We developed and followed the PVD coating processes strictly. Exterior and Interior of PVD vacuum chamber cleaning ( ultrasonic wave cleaning, Plasma bombardment cleaning) ; exterior and interior of PVD vacuum chamber drying ( drying oven, inside of chamber drying by heaters up to 250℃ to improve the coating film adhesion.)
Royal Technology has 3 standard machines
- Cylinder Arc unit or ( steered circular cathodic arc sources)
- Planar Ion Source for Plasma cleaning before PVD coating
- DC Sputtering Cathode of Ag ( Gold) deposition
- MF Sputtering Cathode of TiN film coating
| 3 Standard IPG Gold Plating Machine Specifications | |||
| Model | RTAS1000 | RTAS1250 | RTAS1612 |
| Effective Chamber Size | Φ1000 x H1000mm | Φ1250 x H1250mm | Φ1600 x H1250mm |
| Deposition Sources | Cylinder Arc (steered circular arc for option) + DC Sputtering Cathode +
Linear Ion Source |
||
| Vacuum Pumping System ( Leybold Pumps + Turbo Molecular Pump) | SV300B *1 set (300m³/hr) | SV300B* 1 set (300m³/hr) | SV300* 2 set (300m³/hr) |
| WAU1001-1set
(1000m³/hr) |
WAU1001-1set
(1000m³/hr) |
WAU2001-1set
(1000m³/hr) |
|
| TRP48*1 set (48m³/hr) | TRP60*1 set (60m³/hr) | TRP90*1 set (90m³/hr) | |
| Turbo Molecular Pumps:
1 set (3500L/S) |
Turbo Molecular Pumps:
2 sets (3500L/S) |
Turbo Molecular Pumps:
3 sets (3500L/S) |
|
| Sputtering Power Supply | 1*24KW | 1*36KW | 2*36KW |
| Arc Power Supply | 6*5KW | 7*5KW | 9*5KW |
| Bias Power Supply | 1*24KW | 1*36KW | 1*36KW |
| Planetary Rods | 6/8 | 12/16 | 20 |
| Ultimate Vacuum | 9.0*10-4Pa (empty, clean,room temperature) | 9.0*10-4Pa (empty, clean,room temperature) | 9.0*10-4Pa (empty, clean,room temperature) |
| Cycle Time (depends on pump) | 40’~50’ depends on substrate material and coating recipes | ||
| Working Power Requirement | 3Phase 5 lines
AC380V,50HZ,55KW |
3Phase 5 lines
AC380V,50HZ,110KW |
3Phase 5 lines
AC380V,50HZ,150KW |
| Cooling Water | Recycle cooling water, industrial water chiller + EDI purified water device | ||
| Processing Gas (99.99%) | 4 ways | 4 ways | 4 ways |
| Footprint (mm) | 2000*2000*2500 | 4000*4500*3200 | 5500*5000*3200 |
| Total Weight(KGS) | 4500 | 7000 | 9000 |
| Total Power Consumption(Approx.) | 50KW | 110KW | 150KW |
| Actual Power Consumption(Approx.) | 30KW | 60KW | 70KW |
Above technical parameters only for reference, Royal Technology reserves the right for final production based on specified applications. We provide you not only the coating machine but the total coating solutions, turnkey-project service is available.
Built Time: 2015
Location: Zhejiang, China
Compact design with multiple coating sources
