Magnetron sputtering explained.

Technological advances are wondrous

I'm an admirer of all things technological, and especially super innovations that make the world a cleaner and safer place. Sometimes I scout around the web just to see what's new and I came across this odd video that to me looked like it was a very slow game of pong, which it wasn't. It turned out to be a video explaining in laymans terms what magnetron sputtering is.

Honestly, if you had asked me before what Magnetron sputtering was, I would have guessed that it's the sound your microwave makes if you forget to take the little twistie off your reheating food, you know, the kind that has just a little bit of metal in it so it makes you microwave all sparky and, if it goes unchecked quite broken as well? Well, it turns out that I would have been very wrong.

Playing Pong!

How magnetron sputtering differs from galvanization

Magnetron spluttering is a technique by which a tiny coating is created on a substrate. The process is used to make all kinds of usefull stuff, for instance in micro-technology, parts of batteries, electronics (coatings put over printplates to protect them) and a myriad of other applications ranging from childrens toys to motorcycle components.

There's a big difference between the technology I remember from physics class growing up and this sputtering. Back then you would use a big vat of fluids and loads of electricity and I believe some chemicals as well and you could galvanize things. That meant a “thin”layer of zinc would be deposited on your metal object. In Holland our traditional garbage cans were galvanized, which meant the were more durable than just plain iron ones because they wouldn't rust (or at least not while the zinc was in place. You could also galvanize with chromium (making things nice and shiny) and you could copper, silver or goldplate stuff in much the same way. Commercial galvanisation used large quantities of Chromium 6, and even cyanide which of course have a rather desastrous effect on the environment. So, thank goodness they've come up with an alternative!

Pong, the simple explanation

So how does it work? The pong video shows the process in a very simplified way. Something that is the base for the coating (the bottom piece in the pong game) is put inside a chamber. The chamber is then filled with Argon, which as I understand it is like a catalyst, it doesn't get used up in the process but it does help it along. The electrons play their little pong game and a thin layer of the agent (at the bottom) is deposited onto the target (at the top in the ponggame). It sticks there and a tiny film of the material from the bottom is now stuck to the material at the top. The smart part is that there is a magnet at the top that catches any stray electrons so that all those that are knocked free from the bottom actually make it to the top.

So that's the basic process, a really simple explanation of it anyway. But this Magnetron sputtering is at the heart of many of our modern instruments. It's in our batteries, our cars are coated with it, it's used in sporting goods and childrens toys, in cutting tools and TV screens. And of course it's still used to protect metal from corrosion and to decorate all things that look better when the shine!

Global warming explained? Or is it?

Science and statistics can prove anything

We all know the film that former vice president Al Gore made, that inconvenient truth? Remember that? I do. I remember that it stamped the word “urgent” on the worlds Global warming agenda. It seems that since that time this has disappeared somewhat from the eye of the media. There was some controversie over the research done for the film and the scientists who participated in it. Then there was “What the bleep do we know” and the world shifted it's focus again, trying to disprove the enormous claims made in that movie. Unsuccesfully so far, but give a statistician enough time and a pencil and they can prove and disprove anything. Science is at best a fair stab at a description of reality, but most often a woefully incomplete look at some details of said reality and the whole scientific method is choosing to exclude certain measurements that would disprove your theory and to search for that which is within the “variance”. Give a statisticien a bell curve and he's happy for hours...

The mystery of climate control

So, well science isn't really my cup of tea, my vision of reality includes feelings and intuïtions, learning and discovering from a place of joyful not knowing. The joy of discovery is mine. From that place I studied the Global Warming theory in the movie, in particular the bit about the earth's airconditioning system.

I'n fascinated with how airconditioning works though. I can understand a motor generating heat, through the burning of energy. I mean that's in broad strokes how our body works: Energy in, a bit of pumping around and burning it up, your body retains it's temperature even in sub-zero weather. But how do you get a thing to cool, weather it be a fridge or airconditioning. The film explained it to me on a very large scale. Honestly I don't know if it's the same way a traditional office airconditioning works, but here's what I've come to understand about the process.

What I think I understand

The sun heats the earth. (fuel in) Heat rises (pumping action). Cold drops! This was a surprise to me cold seeks the lower altitudes, I mean, it seems kind of logical now that I know it, but to me this was the key bit of information I was lacking. So there's a motion, both of the heat and the cold and in the Earth's oceans, this happens in a way that causes the colder water to go to the deepest oceans that just happen to be in the tropical region. My inquisitive mind here thinks: Is it an accident that the deepest oceans are tropical, or is this caused by the migration of vast bodies of water? Either way, the cold water then slowly heats up, because it's in contact with the hotter water at the surface and the hotter water cools down, cooling the earth in this whole process. This is why the temperature on earth supports life in the far reaches of the planet, though admittedly some have to wear heavy fur coats to stand the cold. This is how the movie explained the Earth's Airconditioning System. So now I want to know for sure if this is how a regular airconditioning works as well.

So here's my question

Did I understand this correctly? Or can someone enlighten me?