Team members

Xiubo Tian  (Team leader)，Kejun Ou，Lifeng Chen，Xiaocan Xing，Limin Zhang，Pengli Jin，Jinfei Ma，Chunhu Wang，Yao li，Jinzhi Cao，Jie Deng，Zhancheng Zhang，Zhendong Cai.

Project Introduction

The plasma discharge team is mainly composed of experts from Harbin Institute of Technology, and the person in charge is Professor Tian Xiubo. Since 1990, the team members have taken the lead in carrying out the research of composite pulse coating power supply in China, especially high-power pulsed magnetron, high-power glow discharge and high-power pulse multi-arc power supply and discharge technology, and have accumulated nearly 30 years. The advanced power supply and the complete coating system with power supply as the core developed by the team have been exported to United States, Germany, Singapore and other countries, as well as domestic universities such as Peking University and Tsinghua University and some enterprises. The plasma coating technology based on high ionization rate developed by the team has been applied to many key fields such as aviation, aerospace, high-speed rail, communications, mobile phones, tablets, wearables, etc., and has published more than 300 academic papers in related fields.

Project significance

Team technical capabilities: high-power power products for coating, high-quality coating solutions in various coating fields:

1. Power supply technology

The team's power supply technology has the characteristics of high power, multi-waveform, digitalization, intelligence, etc., and can achieve arc suppression function with fast protection. The multi-waveform, digitization, and programmability of current and voltage provide unlimited space for plasma-related processes and product realization possibilities in various fields. To a certain extent, our team has solved the key (high-current pulse) of this "stuck neck" technology, and achieved multi-level productization and market transformation.

The power supply adopts a unique architecture design and modular design, which is composed of high-power pulsed magnetron power supply (HiPIMS power supply), high-energy pulsed arc power supply (P3E power supply), bias power supply (80k power supply) and various special power supplies, mainly serving the vacuum coating industry.

The role of HiPIMS, P3E, and 80k power supply in the film layer: the improvement of film-based adhesion, the improvement of compactness, the stability of the refractive index, the increase of sputtering rate, the increase of multi-arc deposition rate, etc., etc., can be used in the surface strengthening, etching, cleaning and many other aspects of the material, mainly used in the core coating process of aerospace temperature-resistant superhard, semiconductor thermoelectric conversion, high-density metal coating based on 5G applications, petrochemical hydrophobic anti-corrosion, marine anti-corrosion and many other fields.

2. Coating application solutions

With the above power supply technology, various materials such as hard coatings, temperature-resistant and low-friction film layers, and hydrophobic and anti-corrosion films can be quickly prepared on PVD (magnetron sputtering/multi-arc deposition) and PECVD models, and high-current and low-voltage parameters can also be provided for pre-plating cleaning.

Combined with the team's many years of research experience in PVD and PECVD, we can provide these equipment and process-related solutions to the application fields of hard coatings, DLC coatings, optical coatings, and various photoelectric coatings (thermoelectric, piezoelectric, thermoelectric and other functional fields).

The equipment owned by the team can realize pipe inner wall coating, rigid thin film, optical film, functional film and so on.

3. Coating of the inner wall of pipeline equipment

Pipe corrosion can lead to economic losses of around tens of billions per year. Pipe inner wall treatment is a global problem. United States has achieved > 10m length pipe coating. We have developed a new type of high-power pulse power supply, combined with the hollow cathode principle, to achieve internal plasma discharge and ion quality control, and obtained 10~150um thickness of DLC deposition, the processing length can be up to 20m, which can be used for anti-corrosion, wear resistance, anti-wax, hydrophobic, etc. This project can realize large-scale, special-shaped pipe coating.

Addressable market   

Our team combines high-power power technology with the hollow cathode principle to achieve a DLC coating on the inner wall of the pipe, resulting in a unique perspective of the inner wall coating technology of the pipe. On this basis, we put forward a equipment concept for pipe inner wall coating, and carried out full technical exchanges with domestic equipment manufacturers on the overall layout of the equipment, core device, unique structural design and vacuum system optimization, and finally determined the customized scheme of this SLPPL-1200 equipment. At present, the whole set of equipment is being processed and manufactured in the outsourcing factory.

Research Interests

1) High-power pulse magnetron power supply: put forward the pre-ionized high-power magnetron mode, developed the first set of high-power magnetron sputtering power supply in China, and proposed the composite discharge mode, to a certain extent, guided the domestic high-power magnetron sputtering technology, at present, the equipment we developed is running in many scientific research schools and institutes such as Tsinghua University, Peking University, Dagong, Shandong University, Ningbo Institute of Materials, Institute of Ceramics of the Academy of Sciences, Institute of Mechanics, etc.

2) High-current high-voltage power supply: The high-current density cavity internal composite discharge is proposed, and the high-current high-voltage power supply (100~1000A/1~10kV pulse) is developed to realize the inner wall coating of multi-size and complex tube types, which has been applied to the inner wall coating of oil pipelines of a foreign enterprise.

The team is committed to the research and practice of high-energy plasma discharge mechanism.

Mechanism effect: high particle ionization rate, high ion energy, and plasma high-energy region can be extended outward

Broad-spectrum beneficial effects of coating (film) layer: enhanced film-based adhesion, ultra-high compactness, high-gloss and glossy surface, and ultra-thickness

Application scenario characteristics: surface cleaning, local modification, etching, deposition, modification, etc., etc., and modification of planar substrates, 3D substrates, and high-aspect ratio inner holes.

Products and services are available: 3 types of power supplies (HiPIMS power supply, P3E power supply, 80k power supply), DLC inner and outer wall coating Turn-key Solution, various coating application solutions, partial surface modification, etching solution

Its application field products are listed: ceramic dielectric filters, IGBT liners, flexible circuit boards, mobile phone decorative plating, knife molds...