Innovative functional glassy coatings from the standpoint of modern technologies have a potential of novel and unexpected aspects, taking into account new physical properties, which is possible to achieve in the modern manufacturing process via control and manipulation of glassy coating at both macro- and nanoscale. We could mention here antireflective, low heat conductivity, electroconducting and other types of coatings, which play an increasing role in the energy effective applications, solar panels etc. In this Project Institute of Solid State Physics University of Latvia will solve physical and technological problems, and create a new commercial products for export with a high added value.
Many modern energetical devices employ optically transparent coatings produced from electroconducting oxides (TCO) as one of key elements. There emerges a commercial possibility to develop equipment for production of such TCO coatings. Previously such the equipment for production of TCO coatings was based on expensive indium oxide (ITO) as a starting material for production of coatings with a high quality. The Institute wants to develop novel basic technologies, with much cheaper TCO coating production, which could be incorporated into the new coating equipments.
In the framework of the project the Institute plans to develop a new sputtering technology and solution investigations for different TCO materials on the basis of High Power Impulse Magnetron Sputtering (HIPIMS), and to investigate basic industrial operation principles, which could be employed as effective and economically profitable technology in AS „Sidrabe” in order to develop vacuum coating devices. Our Project will result in a complicated industrial research, in order to clarify a possibility to use HIPIMS sources for sputtering and developing cheap and high quality vacuum coatings.