A digital twin for PVD deposition of tailored coatings on 3D substrates

Abstract

Due to its high film quality, reproducibility and deposition rate, magnetron sputtering is an established technology for production of optical filters. Optical devices benefit from the possibility to deposit coatings directly onto diffractive elements such as lenses. This reduces the number of components and internal reflections but requires a tailored thickness distribution, which is challenging to achieve e.g. via uniformity masks. We demonstrate that a digital twin derived from physical process modelling can successfully predict the deposition profile on 3D substrates and thereby minimize the number of pre-deposition experiments.