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This paper reviews the most commonly used deposition techniques for hard coatings, namely Plasma-Assisted Chemical Vapor Deposition (PACVD), Reactive Sputtering (RS) and Activated Reactive Sputtering (ARE). The role of plasma parameters and process parameters as well as their interdependency is discussed in terms of the three steps in deposition of films, i.e. generation of the depositing species, transport from source to substrate and film growth on the substrate.

Large grain poly-Silicon (p-Si) films have been evaluated for high speed TFT for flat panel displays [1,2]. It is expected that with good quality p-Si, “System on Glass” products, in which entire electronic circuitry is incorporated directly onto glass are achievable [3]. This approach therefore has the potential to fabricate Integrated AMLCD's (IAMLCD) and bypass conventional Si wafer based products and integrate CMOS circuits with direct view TFT LCD manufacturing. To realize this potential; it is necessary to develop a production process for depositing repeatable, good quality p-Si films on to large area glass substrates.

A thermal diagnostic for evaluating the performance of refractory coatings under a variety of heat loads is demonstrated. Heat flow through refractory coatings of TiC exposed to the edge plasma of Microtor II was measured using coated copper samples instrumented with thermocouples. Using interior temperature data, the inverse heat conduction problem was solved numerically to obtain the surface temperature and heat flux during the plasma pulse (50–70 ms typical duration). Features in the thermal profiles could be resolved to within less than 10 ms.

Titanium disulfide has been made by the Activated Reactive Evaporation process. Its electrical conductivity and electrochemical behavior are similar to that of bulk TiS2, but its lithium diffusivity is lower and depends on the lithium content of the cathode.