Abstract: This invention relates to coating of substrates in a vacuum system. A beam of molecules incident upon a molecular beam converter is transformed into a molecular beam flowing from the converter toward a substrate to be coated, or on which a layer is to be grown epitaxially. The incident beam is directed onto a heated impingement surface. In most embodiments the impingement surface generally faces the substrate to be coated, and the incident beam strikes the surface from the substrate side. A heating means maintains the impingement surface at a designated temperature. The heating means is separated and shielded from the impingement surface to avoid introducing contaminants from the heating means into the converted molecular beam, and also to avoid adverse physical and chemical effects on the heating means caused by the incident beam and its dissociation products.

Abstract: In high rate sputter coating sources, it is generally necessary to liquid cool the sputter targets. In one type of source, a cooled wall of a cathode assembly is closely adjacent a sidewall of the sputter target. During normal operation the sidewall of the target expands thermally into tight contact with the cooled wall, whereby cooling of the target is effected without the need for bonding the target to the cooled wall using a solder or other adhesive. Thus, replacement of worn conventional targets is a relatively simple procedure. When the targets are made of certain special materials, such as fragile materials or materials with low coefficients of thermal expansion, target warping, cracking or melting can occur. Such problems are overcome or alleviated by the novel design approach of the present invention, which employs a sputter target assembly in place of a conventional target.