Design, development, and manufacturing of highly advanced and cost effective aluminium sputtering plant for large area telescopic mirrors.

The design, development and manufacturing of a fully automated and cost effective aluminum sputtering unit for the deposition of aluminum on large area telescopic mirrors (maximum diameter of 3600mm) is presented here. The unit employs DC planar magnetron sputtering for the deposition process. A large area glow discharge unit is also designed for the pre-cleaning of the mirrors prior to aluminum coating. A special kinematic support structure with rotation is designed to support heavy mirrors of large area to minimize the deflection of the mirrors during deposition process. A custom designed 'mask' is employed in the magnetron system to improve the thickness uniformity within <±3%. The adhesion, thickness uniformity and reflectivity properties are studied in detail to validate the sputtering plant. Special fixtures have been designed for the system to accommodate smaller mirrors and studies have been conducted for the coatings and reported in the paper. The unit was successfully tested at HHV facility in Bangalore and will be installed at the ARIES Facility, Nainital.