The 51st Society of Vacuum Coaters (SVC) Technical Conference was held this week amid warm spring weather at the Hyatt Regency Chicago. The SVC conference has been gaining attention over the past few years as nanoscale film systems have become more commercialized. About 170 exhibitors of equipment and systems for vacuum-based coating, surface engineering, and related technologies saw good attendance over the two days for the exhibit—the technical conference ran six days starting with a plenary on Solar Photovoltaics Technology: The Beginning of the Revolution. The plenary was presented by Lawrence Kazmerski, director of the National Center for Photovoltaics at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, Colo. Kazmerski has been at NREL for more than 20 years and has won four R&D 100 awards based on PV technology.
Indeed, the hot talk on the exhibit floor and the conference rooms was on PV technologies as it ramps up. Even the PV division of mega-manufacturer Applied Materials had a significant presence in the exhibits.
Other hot topics covered in the symposium included sessions on biomedical and pharmaceutical applications and high-power impulse magnetron sputtering. A session presented by Michael Devine, manager of applications engineering at Dexter Magnetic Technologies, Hicksville, NY, discussed his company’s work on optimizing magnetron configurations to sputter thicker rotatable cylindrical targets. The development of this technology allows coaters to run targets about twice as long before needing replacement, saving half the time required for shut down and replacement of the targets. Their development work in the design of the turnaround areas of the targets played an important role in sustaining the plasma of the enlarged targets.
