Method and apparatus for evaporating materials in a vacuum coating plant

摘要

A method and apparatus for evaporating materials in a vacuum evaporator by bombarding a material to be evaporated with electrons generated by a low voltage arc discharge sustained between a hot cathode and an anode comprising, locating the hot cathode in a chamber which is separated from an evaporation chamber wherein the hot cathode chamber communicates with the evaporation chamber through an aperture, connecting the material to be evaporated as the anode in the evaporation chamber, continuously introducing a gas into the hot cathode chamber while evacuating the evaporation chamber to maintain a pressure differential therebetween, and concentrating the beam of electrons by a magnetic field so as to obtain on the surface of the anode a power density sufficient for evaporation.