The metallisation technique used by AMB is known as Physical Vapour Deposition (PVD). This technique generates a wafer-thin metal film which can be coated in a range of different materials, such as plastic and metal. With this technique, metals are vaporised in a vacuum in different ways, and then condensed onto the material which is to be coated.
There are a number of different ways in which the metal can be vaporised and deposited, or alloyed with another material (substrate).
1. Vacuum chambers. In the vacuum metallisation chamber, the metal is heated until it reaches boiling point, and vaporises. Then, the metal condenses upon everything present in the chamber.
2. Sputter deposition. Sputter deposition is a method whereby ions are ejected onto a target metal or alloy using a sputtering unit. When the ions collide with their target at maximum speed, the metal is vaporised
AMB has five vacuum metallisation chambers and one sputtering unit. In these chambers over the years we have fitted in excess of 100 million mobile phone enclosures with shielding aluminium coating, around 5 µm in thickness. These chambers have also been used to give hundreds of thousands of reflectors their reflective finish, with layers under 100 nm in width.
At present, our sputtering unit is engaged exclusively with the surface treatment of high-reflection downlighter reflectors.