Rocky Mountain Sampler: Front range research, applications, and technology

Arrelaine Dameron
Director of Research and Development Forge Nano
Louisville, Colorado

Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) is a platform technology that has been widely demonstrated throughout the semiconductor industry, but is not yet widely accepted for modification of high surface area materials. However, R&D literature has shown ALD to impart significant processing and performance gains in all areas of advanced materials. For energy applications like energy storage and fuel cells, it has been perceived as slow and too expensive to consider as a realistic process for commercial adoption. However, Forge Nano has patented, constructed, and demonstrated a high throughput ALD capability at manufacturing scales, unlocking new potential for lower cost integration of ALD into products.

For example, in energy storage, as the mobility and portability requirements grow, so does the need for higher energy density materials, higher power density systems, and enhanced lifecycles of devices, all of which create additional stresses at interfaces within energy storage modules such as lithium-ion batteries, fuel cells, and supercapacitors.  It is now widely accepted that the interfaces of lithium-ion battery electrode materials can be highly dynamic in nature, and are the source of detrimental effects such as electrolyte decomposition, particle fracturing, crystal phase transformations and other causes of performance fade.  The next generation of energy storage devices will be designed and engineered with tailored interfaces to overcome some of these materials challenges. ALD is a critical tool for anyone attempting to modify interfaces at the R&D scale.  Therefore, ALD should also be at the manufacturing scale to maintain an edge in a competitive market. This talk will discuss ALD as a means of controlling surface phenomena and its application for powder modification for a spectrum of technologies ranging from batteries to catalysis.

Steve Harvey
National Renewable Energy Laboratories
Golden, Colorado

We have used time-of-flight secondary-ion mass spectrometry (TOF-SIMS) at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to investigate the performance and reliability of solar cell materials, and we will present some recent work that highlights the versatility of TOF-SIMS. This work includes: 1) Multi-scale, multi-technique investigations of photovoltaic module failure including TOF-SIMS to enable insights into the root-cause mechanisms of module degradation at the nanoscale that are observed at the length scale of meters; 2) Investigations into the performance and stability of hybrid perovskite solar cell devices and 3) Using a combination of 1-D profiling and 3-D tomography to elucidate the fundamentals of incorporating dopants in CdTe solar cells.

Steve Harvey received B.S. and M.S. degrees, both in ceramic engineering, from Alfred University. He received his Ph.D. in materials science from Northwestern University in 2008. In 2011, he completed his postdoctoral stay as an Alexander Von Humboldt research fellow in Aachen Germany and has been at NREL ever since. His Ph.D. work focused on making correlations between bulk defect chemistry and surface electronic properties of transparent conducting oxides. His postdoctoral work focused on investigating cation diffusion in mixed-conducting oxides. His work at NREL since 2014 has focused on using time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry to enable more efficient and reliable photovoltaic materials across multiple photovoltaic technologies.

Broadband optical monitoring is becoming more popular and is being applied to a variety of new thin film processes. It is quite accurate, and because it allows for watching spectral features develop over a wide range of wavelengths, it avoids problems with insensitive layers that plague single-wavelength optical monitoring.

We will discuss different types of processes, types of optical monitoring, and their precision and accuracy. We will evaluate and describe real-time analysis and demonstrate process control software and how it can be applied to thin film monitoring.   We will present a simulated monitoring process system.

Optical instrumentation configurations and considerations for thin film monitoring will be presented with a focus on spectroscopic techniques.

Alan D. Streater, president of Boulder Optical Design Inc., has a Ph.D. in physics (JILA/NIST, U. of Co. 1985). He worked 2.5 years on postdoctoral research (Leiden University), and then spent 11 years in the Physics Department at Lehigh University (tenured 1995), specializing in the interaction of light and matter, followed by 11 years in the optics industry (Research Electro-Optics and Boulder Optical Design, Inc.). Dr. Streater has 40 publications, including several patents and pending patents.

Brooke Robinson, Sales Application Engineer at Avantes Inc, holds a Bachelor degree in Computer Engineering with a minor in Mathematics from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology.  Brooke brings a wealth of engineering and computer programming knowledge to Avantes.

John D. Williams
Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Colorado State University
Director, Center for Electric Propulsion and Plasma Engineering CSU

Both gridded and gridless ion sources are used in advanced plasma propulsion systems for maneuvering satellites and spacecraft. A summary of these systems will be given along with descriptions of new technology and concepts that are being developed to improve performance and reduce costs. Technology and concepts for plasma propulsion and ground-based plasma processing are closely related and several examples will be given where advances in one field led to advances in the other field. Furthermore, much of the cross-pollination between the two areas has occurred in Colorado, and some of this history and ongoing activity will be summarized.

Steve Franka, Manager of Detector Technology Center, Ball Aerospace

Overview of how Ball Aerospace applies vacuum technology to the design and processing of cooled image sensors within focal plane hardware for its space-based systems

Barry Page and Gordon Hill
MKS Instruments
Boulder, CO

Vacuum Deposition processes in Semiconductor, LED and other industries can produce problems with exhaust management as materials deposit not only on the intended substrate, but also in the exhaust line after the chamber if not managed properly. As deposition occurs in the exhaust line the system conductance decreases, which can affect the performance of the process, and also reliability of system components can be adversely affected. There are two solutions for mitigating problems with byproduct deposition that can be used in tandem or individually to improve system uptime and reliability. One solution controls the deposition on the lines. In a second method effluent can be trapped by using knowledge of the properties of the byproducts. By using either one or both of these exhaust management techniques for deposition systems the problems caused by the effluent can be reduced. When the techniques are paired with simulations, design considerations and predictions, exhaust management can significantly increase system uptime and reliability.

Dave Diercks, Colorado School of Mines

JenniferSchofield, NREL

Tomoko Borsa, CU Boulder

Aric Sanders, NIST

Marilyn  Andrews, Rocky Mountain Labs