Treatment system including vacuum isolated sources and method

摘要

Treatment systems and associated methods for exposing one or more articles to at least one treatment source are disclosed herein. In one embodiment the system includes a single treatment source. The treatment source and the article or articles being treated are positioned in separately evacuable chambers. In a method of using the first embodiment, the article or articles can be removed from a handling chamber while the treatment source remains in an evacuated environment within a source chamber. Multi-source treatment systems and associated methods are also disclosed herein. Each treatment source in the multi-source systems is positioned in a respective evacuable chamber completely isolated from the other sources which make up the overall system. An evacuable multi-source handling chamber is arranged for selective movement between the source chambers. The multi-source handling chamber is moved from source to source to accomplish exposure of one or more articles to each source while both the article and the sources remain in an evacuated environment.