Nv Bekaert Sa

Sulzer Metaplas Gmbh

Innovative Sputtering Technology

Pascal Verheyen

Wilmert De Bosscher

Hugo Lievens

Erik Dekempeneer

Paul Lippens

A coating apparatus is revealed that is designed to coat substrates by means of a physical vacuum deposition process or a chemical vacuum deposition process or a combination thereof. Said coating apparatus is particular in that it uses a rotatable magnetron () that is coverable with an axially moveable shutter (). Such an arrangement enables to keep the magnetron target clean or to clean the target in between or even during subsequent coating steps. The shutter further provides for a controllable gas atmosphere in the vicinity of the target. The arrangement wherein the magnetron is centrally placed is described. Substrates are then exposed to the sputtering source from all angles by hanging them on a planetary carousel () that turns around the magnetron.

Sputtering apparatus

A coating apparatus () for batch coating of substrates is presented. In the batch coater layers of a stack can be deposited by means of physical vapor deposition, by means of chemical vapor deposition or by a mixture of both processes. When compared to previous apparatus, the mixed mode process is particularly stable. This is achieved by using a rotatable magnetron () rather than the prior-art planar magnetrons. The apparatus is further equipped with a rotatable shutter that allows for concurrent or alternating process steps.

Coating apparatus

An antipiliferage tag comprising a soft-magnetic thin film (100) for use as an active element in an electronic article surveillance (E.A.S.) system. The film (100) has an easy axis (102) with a particular direction. The tag has been folded along at least one folding line (104) so that the tag comprises at least two layers which at least partially overlap with each other. The folding line (104) forms an oblique angle different from zero with the direction of the easy axis (102) so that the direction of the easy axis (102) in one layer is different from the direction of the easy axis (106) in another layer. In this way an antipiliferage tag which is insensitive to its orientation in a detection gate of an E.A.S. system is obtained.

Magnetic antipilferage tag

Layered reflector for light radiation, its manufacture and its use

Growing community of inventors

Gavere, Belgium

Pascal Verheyen