The Advantages of Using Magnetron Technology for Deposition

Written by: Denton Vacuum, LLC

Summary: Magnetron technology consists of high voltage and ion bombardment to produce a quality film layer.

This guide brings you the basics of understanding magnetron sputtering technology. Although it may seem like another ordinary form of PVD coating technology it possesses qualities and characteristics that other deposition methods lack.

The Basics

What exactly is magnetron sputtering technology? For one, it’s a physical vapor deposition coating method that’s used to deposit specific metals onto a substrate. Magnetron sputtering utilizes plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition as its primary form of coating due to its high adhesion rates. The process consists of a sputtering material bombarded by a set of ions to a target surface, therefore creating the thin film itself.

The vacuum chamber of the PECVD coating machine is filled to the brim with a select inert gas and charged with a high amount of voltage. A glow discharge is then created which results in the acceleration of ions to the target surface. This creates the plasma coating. The inert gas ions will then eject the sputtering materials which will result in a sputtered coating layer on the products. This is a common deposition method that is used in a variety of industries today.

Characteristics

Some of the main characteristics of magnetron sputtering technology include a water-cooled target to reduce overall radiation heat, oxide coatings, layer uniformity, and smooth sputter coatings (depending on the specific type of magnetron sputtering system utilized during the process). These make up the bulk of magnetron technology’s strengths and are the reasons why so many people use this technology over others.

How Diamond Like Carbon Coatings Are Formed

diamond-like-carbon-coatings

DLC coatings are dense, consistent, and relatively simple to create.

Written by: Denton Vacuum, LLC

Diamond like carbon coatings, or DLC coatings, can be deposited using a variety of deposition methods such as sputtering, cathodic arc, ion beam, electron beam, and lasers. Through the process of physical vapor deposition, one can create a high quality and consistent DLC coating that can be used for a variety of applications.

Coating Process Sample

One of the most common ways to produce DLC coatings is through a sputter coater, which is essentially a vacuum chamber that has the ability to deposit metals onto a substrate through a complex process. The product can be placed within the chamber on a fixturing carousel when it is evacuated. The produce will then be preheated to a low processing temperature that will not exceed a certain temperature – typically 300 degrees Fahrenheit. The preheating phase will then condition the substrate for the coating to ensure that all of the moisture that has been absorbed by the material has been outgassed before the deposition process occurs.

The process will then transition into the ion etching phase where the product will be bombarded with ions and electrons. There will then be a scrubbing phase, which cleans the surface and remove any micro oxides. The process will then move on to the coating phase, which involves thin film evaporation to occur to begin the production of the DLC coating. When the underlayer coating reaches the proper thickness, the process will then transition into the DLC coating step, which deposits a dense and smooth amorphous carbon layer onto the product surface.

Advantages to Synthetic DNA Molecules

Written by: The Midland Certified Reagent Company

Summary: Working with the human genome has enormous potential for the future.

Along with the ability to decode the human gene pool is the process to create synthetic segments of DNA. Synthetic oligos are perfect for testing because they simulate human DNA and can give scientists accurate results to demonstrate how a potential vaccine might affect the body. The ability to work with our gene pool will greatly enhance the understanding of medical science in the future.

Synthesizing a Reaction

The first step in creating a cure is isolating the genes involved in the disease, and how they affect the body. Once we understand more about the disease itself, we can work on testing drugs that will cause a certain reaction. For instance, if we wanted to cure cancer we might want to attack the gene that causes cancer cells to endlessly reproduce. We would need to identify the cancer gene responsible, and then see how to safely destroy or deactivate that gene without interfering with others.

This would be too difficult to test in living subjects, mostly because conditions are hard to duplicate. It’s now possible to perform DNA synthesis under precise lab conditions, which completely removes the need for a live subject until a cure has been defined and substantially tested.

Future Prospects

Soon, it may be possible for scientists to utilize RNA synthesis for their own aims. One method already tested involves using RNA to write code to DNA and turn molecules into storage devices. Maybe someday we’ll be able to write entirely new genetic code to existing DNA.

Discovering New Cures for Age Old Diseases

Cancer has been a problem humans have been dealing with for ages, and it’s a continual thorn in our collective side. It’s a disease with a high mortality rate, and we understand a lot about what it does but not how to stop that process. While medical science works hard on cracking that puzzle, we’ve made progress on other diseases that have been problems for ages.

Understanding Disease

HPLC purification is a crucial process in forensic science, telling us more about how a disease has affected someone on a molecular level. We can use this process to test reactions of potentially harmful toxins, in order to isolate exactly how a disease affects the body. Once the reaction is observed, and repeated, it becomes something scientists can test for.

Understanding what a disease does is the first step in curing, killing or deactivating it.

How Cures Work

Going deeper, we can even use these synthetic strands to test for the presence of something. Phosphorothioate oligonucleotides, for instance, are “anti-sense” particles used in genetic therapy. These drugs basically deactivate whatever strand of DNA would otherwise cause the harmful genetic disorder to crop up.

We can also test for these chemicals and toxins in real-time, which means a diagnosis is much faster than it was even ten or twenty years ago. That’s made a significant difference in response times and diagnoses for patients in places like Africa, a region beset with malaria outbreaks. Testing has sped up results and that means doctors have more time to prescribe life saving medication to patients. The costs are also lower, so testing is feasible in poorer nations.


 

Bio: The Midland Certified Reagent Company can manufacture phosphorotioate oligonucleotides, as well as purification modalities used in a variety of testing processes.

Are Medical Device Coatings Safe for the Body?

Written by: Denton Vacuum, LLC

Summary: Are medical device coatings actually safe for the body?

As medical science evolves, the need to put objects into a patient’s body increases. There are more gadgets that do more to keep patients alive and comfortable for longer periods of time. Consider just how much tubes like the catheter have changed. They are still not a pleasant experience, but aqueous coatings have made them easier to slip in and out of the patient’s body.

These chemicals bring up important questions about the safety risks posed to your body. Are these device coatings actually making patients safer?

Consider the Device

There are several kinds of anti-reflective coating possible for eye glasses. Each is good for a specific kind of user. Index-matching, for instance, functions like tarnishing a lens. So it is with coatings, each coating being suited to a specific purpose and carrying out a specific duty. Anti-microbial coatings, for instance, are designed to fend off bacterial infections that can seep through open wounds created by tubes into the skin.

Without these devices, patients still need a catheter or eye glasses, but their site or comfort levels may be diminished. In some cases, their health is jeopardized as they are at risk for infection.

Alterations to the Device

If the coating inhibits the device from doing its job, the coating is ineffective. That’s why medical manufacturers utilize a thermal evaporation system when applying coatings to a device. The finish is thin-film, often only micrometers in thickness, which presents almost no difference to the patient.

Thin film is a little different from the effect yo get with UHV sputter deposition. This process acts more like a spray can, and can give a smooth surface but it more often used to metalize something. You might find metalized plastic in joint replacements or acting as anti-static shielding for medical equipment in the patient’s room.

New Advances in Medical Device Production

Written by: Denton Vacuum, LLC

Summary: Using sputter deposition and thermal evaporation, you can manufacture almost any product a patient might need.

Medical devices have undergone some serious changes in the past few years that have made them cheaper, and also more durable. New advancements in manufacturing allow companies to make minimally invasive products, and durable replacement parts. The same techniques that go into manufacturing semiconductors are now part of the medical field. Here are just a few of the benefits they bring.

Durability

A thermal evaporation system can coat one material in the particulates of another material. This is especially useful for manufacturers of medical devices, as they can coat plastic pieces and metalize them. The end result is a more durable part. Take hip joints, for instance. These replacement parts are crucial to the elderly and disabled. Thermal evaporation allows manufacturers to produce these devices at low cost, using parts that wouldn’t normally work long-term.

Comfort

Medical device coatings allow patients to wear something in the body with minimal discomfort. These devices usually make tubes like catheters more pliable, so they can easily slide into place and set there for days at a time without the patient experiencing pain. A special process is used to coat the tubing in an aqueous substance that prevents the device from sticking to the body’s internals.

Final Thoughts

UHV sputter deposition, and thermal coatings, have dramatically changed how devices are manufactured. New devices are made with cheaper materials, then reinforced to a level of quality not otherwise possible. Eye glasses also receive this treatment to achieve the anti-glare affect. Ultimately, cheaper devices keep healthcare costs down.

How Vacuum Evaporation Systems Help Patient Care

Modern medicine relies on a number of implantable devices to further patient care efficiently. These devices need to be non-abrasive so that the patient does not experience extreme discomfort at all times when wearing them. A vacuum evaporation system is used during the manufacturing process to solve a number of these complex problems and improve patient care.

Vacuum Evaporation

The first step to vacuum evaporation involves placing a substrate into a vacuum sealed chamber, along with chemicals to be super heated. The pressure inside the chamber causes the chemicals to boil at room temperature, which breaks the chemicals into particulate matter. As the heat lowers, the particles bounce off the walls of the sputter coater, where the substrate receives a thin film of the chemical.

The process is especially useful when there are concerns of harming the substrate by boiling. The original inventor of this process was Henri Nestle, who used it to create the evaporated milk he needed to make his chocolate.

Patient Care

How these systems go from food preparation to patient care involves industrial usage. This technology is used extensively to treat waste water, which is useful for the environment at large. It is also used in the semiconductors that go into medical imaging systems. Vacuum chambers are used extensively for thin film coating of medical implants, like catheters.

These systems are typically clean, and they have low costs associated with managing them. This makes it cheaper and easier to mass produce devices that save lives.

Denton Vacuum, LLC makes vacuum deposition systems for a variety of medical purposes. You can find e-beam and vacuum deposition systems online at Denton Vacuum.

New Species of River Dolphin Surfaces in the Amazon

This article was written by Phin Upham,

For the first time in 100 years, scientists have uncovered a new species of river dolphin from the Amazon. The dolphin was discovered in the Araguaia River, deep within the Brazilian rainforest. A recent announcement in the Plos One scientific journal made the discovery official.

The lead author of the study, biologist Tomas Hrbek operating out of the city of Manaus, claims that the new species is only the third ever to be found in the region.

Researchers estimate there may be approximately 1,000 of the Araguia River dolphins still in the wild. The group further suggests the dolphins be placed on the endangered species list, so that resources can be devoted to protecting their development. Current construction projects on hydro-electric dams threaten the habitats of these dolphins through fragmentation.

Hrbek said that river dolphins are extremely rare, and one of the Earth’s most endangered vertebrates. This discovery represents a new hope for the dolphin. Apparently the animal was commonly recognized, but never studied in detail. It was only after Hrbek’s team used DNA samples to determine that the dolphin was genetically different from other species already present in the Amazon.

The previous river dolphin discovery occurred in 1918, when scientists identified the Chinese baiji dolphin, which went into extinction in 2006. All river dolphins are threatened by extinction, so efforts must be taken to protect these creatures and their habitats.


About the Author: Phin Upham is an investor at a family office/hedgefund, where he focuses on special situation illiquid investing. Before this position, Phin Upham was working at Morgan Stanley in the Media & Technology group. You may contact Phin on his LinkedIn page.

How to Preview PDF Documents in a 64-bit version of Windows 7

It’s common knowledge that the 32-bit version of Windows 7 was able to preview PDFs effortlessly.

The same cannot be said with newer computers which run the 64-bit version of Windows 7 albeit with a powerful processor. And it’s not very different with Windows 8 either.

If one would ask “Why?”, you’d be hard pressed to find the logic behind Microsoft’s decisions.

That said, there are solutions for the 64-bit version of Windows 7 and in particular, we’re talking about Vivid Document Imaging’s “PDF Preview for Windows 7”.

Once you install it, you’ll find that previews of your PDF documents are immediately available. You can also preview the PDF in the Windows Explorer Preview pane…

Of course, there are issues that crop up during its installation since it asks you if you want to place a shortcut on your desktop. Even if you decline, it will place not one but three shortcuts which you can easily delete, of course.

But that’s not all, the program will add its own PDF Viewer which is simply called PDF Viewer but will also tell Windows to make it the default program for .pdfs files. You can change the default viewer back to the one you want.

However, if you choose Adobe Reader, PDF Preview will not show thumbnails of the PDF documents but you will still be able to preview the documents using the Windows Explorer preview pane.

Of course, if Foxit is your preferred viewer, then you won’t have any problems. Yet it must be said that this program still does not work with Windows 8.

Brain Produces Natural Painkillers When Socially Rejected

By Phineas Upham

We know what happens to our feelings when someone rejects us; they get hurt. But what happens in our brains when someone rejects us? A new study reveals that the brain produces natural painkillers when an individual is socially rejected, Science Daily reports.

According to a study published in Molecular Psychiatry by a team from University of Michigan Medical School, the brain not only produces natural painkillers during social rejection, it produces more of it if the individual has more resilience. According to the article, the team used a brain scanning system to track the release of a chemical in the brain during social rejection while online dating. The article states that the study focused on the same area of the brain that responds to physical pain. Prior research has shown that when an individual experiences physical pain, their brain dampens the pain signals by releasing chemicals called opioids into the area between neurons.

“This is the first study to peer into the human brain to show that the opioid system is activated during social rejection,” David T. Hsu, Ph.D., a research assistant professor of psychiatry and lead author of the paper, told Science Daily. “In general, opioids have been known to be released during social distress and isolation in animals, but where this occurs in the human brain has not been shown until now.”

Hsu also told the paper that the personality of the participants had a lot to do with how much opioids were produced by the brain. According to the article, the people who scored high on the resiliency trait test were able to produce more of the chemical during social rejection. What’s more, participants with the most opioids produced in the brain reported being in a better mood than the other participants.

Read more: www.sciencedaily.com


Phineas Upham is an investor from NYC and SF. You may contact Phin on his Phineas Upham website or Facebook page.