Canon Kabushiki Kaisha

Keijiro Nishida

Osamu Kamiya

Nobuyuki Sekimura

Mitsuo Kakei

Kyosuke Ogawa

Hironori Yamamoto

Kimio Takahashi

Mikio Nakasugi

Yoji Sugiura

Yasutomo Fujiyama

Ryozo Hiraga

Susumu Itoh

Norihisa Saito

Tomomasa Nakano

Naoki Shirai

Tadayoshi Kasahara

Masao Shimabayashi

Ichiro Komatsubara

An apparatus and a process for mass production of films by vacuum deposition comprise a substrate charging stage which is evacuated, an interconnecting stage which is positioned adjacent to said substrate charging stage and is evacuated, and a film forming stage which is removably attached to the interconnecting stage and is evacuated independently of the interconnecting stage.

Apparatus and process for mass production of film by vacuum deposition

In making reflection mirrors for optics, a technique is provided for making up a reflection mirror not of a glass-system material but of metallic material, and a method for high-precision mirror-machining of a metal plate is also disclosed.

Reflection mirror for optical instrument

An apparatus for vacuum deposition of a thin film onto the surface of a substrate includes a vacuum container formed by a base plate, a cylindrical side wall and a top plate to accommodate at least four movable sealing caps each having a space adapted to confine a batch of substrates on a carrier of dome shape. The caps move around the center of the base plate. When the caps are stopped to cover respective openings provided through the base plate, there are established a pre-heating, a vapor depositing, a cooling and an air locking chamber, and the batch of processed substrates in the air locking chamber is moved to the outside of the apparatus without disturbing the vacuum in the container. Next, the air locking chamber, after having received a new batch of unprocessed substrates at the space of the cap thereof, is sealed from the ambient atmosphere, and all the caps are advanced one step ahead. The controlled atmosphere in the lower section of the vapor depositing chamber remains almost unchanged during this time to insure that uniform, thin-film layers of deposited material are applied to the substrates. Further, to eliminate fluctuation in quality among manufactured lots, there is provided a novel evaporant feeding mechanism.

Vapor deposition apparatus

Three-layer anti-reflection coatings consisting of first, second and third layers, respectively positioned from a glass base plate. The optical film thickness of the first layer and the second layer is one-half of a designed wavelength while that of the third layer is one-fourth of the same. And the relationship among the refractive index of each layer is second layer (n.sub.2) glass (n.sub.g) first layer (n.sub.1) third layer (n.sub.3). The first layer is made of a mixture of Al.sub.2 O.sub.3 and ZrO.sub.2.

Three layer anti-reflection film

An apparatus for continuously processing articles includes a pre-heating chamber for confining a vacuum therein provided with four openings by which an entrance chamber, two depositing chamber and an exit chamber communicate therewith individually. Each of the openings is provided with a gate valve mounted therein for covering the openings, and particularly the entrance and exit chambers serving to maintain the vacuum in the pre-heating chamber at a predetermined level while feeding unprocessed articles to and removing the processed articles from the pre-heating chamber in such a manner that the vacuum is not affected by the ambient atmosphere. The pre-heating chamber comprises a cylindrical housing in which a water-wheel-like conveyor having means for receiving and holding vacuum deposition jigs carrying articles such as optical elements is intermittently rotated to advance the vacuum deposition jigs through the pre-heating chamber. This feature of the invention facilitates reduction in the heating time per jig. In addition, the automatic inversion of the jig in half revolution of the conveyor serves to facilitate successive applications of a thin film coating on the opposite surfaces of the articles without breaking the vacuum in the processing chambers while insuring that each of the articles is treated identically to produce uniform properties of the thin film coating.

Growing community of inventors

Kanagawa, Japan

Keijiro Nishida